Abstract
Childhood sleep apnea is characterized as airway obstruction because of upper airway impairment due to reduced oxygen levels or awakening from sleep in children. In children, only 1–5% of children suffer from sleep apnea, which equals to about 20 million−100 million children, globally. However, childhood sleep apnea tends to be underdiagnosed with about 90% of children not being properly diagnosed with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a major concern due to the harmful clinical manifestations associated with the condition, such as abnormal breathing during sleep, frequent awakenings or restlessness, frequent nightmares, nocturnal enuresis, difficulty getting up in the morning, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), ADHD-like symptoms, daytime mouth breathing, and abnormal sleep patterns. There are also certain risk factors that can increase the risk of childhood sleep apnea. These risk factors are tonsillar hypertrophy, adenoid hypertrophy, obesity, craniofacial anomalies, and neuromuscular disorders. Childhood risk factors are important to consider because they can increase risk and severity. To aid an efforts to relieve, prevent, and diagnose childhood sleep apnea, there needs to be more efforts to promote, to educate, and to implement diagnostic testing for sleep apnea as a standard of care in pediatric patients.