Clinical predictors of the presence of obstructive sleep apnea in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is much common and associated with worse clinical outcomes in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), however, the diagnosis of OSA in HCM is still insufficient. We aim to investigate the clinical predictors of OSA in a large series of patients with HCM. A total of 589 patients with HCM who underwent sleep evaluations were retrospectively enrolled. Data from clinical characteristics and polysomnography studies were recorded. OSA was present in 346 patients (58.7%). Patients who had OSA were older, more likely to be male and had more clinical comorbidities such as hypertension, atrial fibrillation and cardiac remodeling. Multivariate logistic analyses showed that male, age, body mass index, hypertension and left ventricular outflow tract obstruction were significant factors associated with OSA. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.78 (95% CI 0.74-0.82; P < 0.001). These factors were also able to identify moderate to severe OSA with an AUC of 0.77 (95% CI 0.73-0.81; P < 0.001). These findings suggest that identifying HCM patients with high risk for OSA is feasible using characteristics from clinical practices and clinicians should have no hesitate to conduct sleep test in these patients.