Helping children get better sleep
Snoring and breathing difficulties in sleep affect about 12 per cent of children and can cause significant long-term issues impacting cognitive function, behaviour, and cardiovascular health.
Associate Professor Gillian Nixon (Department of Paediatrics) and Associate Professor Joanne Rimmer (Department of Surgery), in collaboration with colleagues at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, studied the effect of simple nasal sprays on children with snoring and breathing difficulties during sleep. They found that both an anti-inflammatory steroid nasal spray and a saline (salt water) nasal spray were effective in easing symptoms after six weeks of treatment. Symptoms were resolved in about 40% of children in both groups, and those assessed by a surgeon as needing their tonsils and/or adenoids removed was reduced by half.
Snoring and breathing difficulty during sleep is a common problem in childhood and is often treated with surgery to remove the tonsils and adenoids. This work showed that a large proportion of children with this problem could initially be managed by their GP and may not require specialist services as currently recommended.
Associate Professor Nixon and Rimmer’s work is the first large randomised controlled trial of nasal sprays for snoring in children that did not depend on sleep studies performed in a hospital as either inclusion criteria or outcome. They specifically chose to design a pragmatic trial based on symptoms so that results could be directly translated into primary care.
Reference:
Effectiveness of Intranasal Mometasone Furoate vs Saline for Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Children A Randomized Clinical Trial Alice Baker, Anneke Grobler, Karen Davies, Amanda Griffiths, Harriet Hiscock, Haytham Kubba, Rachel L. Peters, Sarath Ranganathan, Joanne Rimmer, Elizabeth Rose, Katherine Rowe, Catherine M. Simpson, Andrew Davidson, Gillian Nixon, Kirsten P. Perrett. JAMA Pediatr. Published online January 17, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.5258
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