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Rationale: OSA is a major clinical problem due to its high prevalence and devastating complications. At present, the European prevalence of OSA is unclear. Limited epidemiological studies have been done and the majority of the European population has not had a reliable estimate of disease. We sought to estimate the European prevalence of OSA using existing data from epidemiological studies. Methods: We contacted the majority of authors of the important analyses following a review of the literature. For countries where no measurement had been made, we used publically available data to obtain estimates of age, gender, race and BMI. We developed an algorithm to match countries without prevalence estimates with countries from which OSA epidemiological studies existed. The situation was complicated given the variable age of the existing studies, the differences in technology used (eg. nasal pressure vs thermistor), the changing scoring criteria (eg. AASM 1999 vs 2007 v. 2012) and other factors. Results: Among the 50 countries in Europe there was population, gender, race and BMI data available for 39. We estimated a European OSA prevalence of approximately 175 million (44.0%) people based on the AASM 2012 criteria using a somewhat conservative approach to our estimates. When focusing on patients with moderate to severe OSA (AHI≥15) we estimate roughly 90 million (22.7%) patients in Europe. Conclusion: This large burden of disease has not been widely appreciated and speaks to the need to leverage new technology to diagnose and treat this specific population. Further efforts with advocacy are also required for patients, providers and policy makers to develop strategies regarding how best to address.
Malhotra et al. (Sat,) studied this question.