Daytime sleepiness (DS) is a complicated clinical problem, often indicating a serious underlying physiological abnormality and associated with higher prevalence of comorbid conditions such as diabetes, myocardial infarction, and stroke. Daytime sleepiness is also the cardinal symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea. How to identify the high risks patients with obstructive sleep apnea for further polysomnography is a difficult problem for doctors in out-patient department. Different methods have been proposed for measuring sleepiness and the Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) is the measure of sleepiness most commonly used in sleep research and clinical settings.~However, whether Epworth sleepiness scale is a good tool with high predictive value of obstructive sleep apnea is not evaluated in the population of Taiwanese. This observational study is set up to document these practices.
This observational survey with retrospective follow-up is designed to study the daytime sleepiness based on Epworth Sleepiness Scale a good way or not to assess Taiwanese with suspected obstructive sleep apnea.