Executive Summary Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Snoring with Oral Appliance Therapy: An Update for 2015

s from these articles were assessed by 2 reviewers to determine whether they met inclusion criteria. However, if there were any questions on whether the abstract met the inclusion criteria, the article was reviewed in detail to determine whether to accept or reject. Articles were included for evaluation if they focused on treatment of snoring and/or OSA with OAs, and included only adult subjects. Included articles also had to address at least one of the eleven “PICO” questions identified ahead of the review process. Articles were accepted if they used either the apnea hypopnea index (AHI) or the respiratory disturbance index (RDI) as determined by an overnight polysomnogram (PSG) or the respiratory event index (REI) as determined by a home sleep apnea test. However, there were 3 articles that did not necessarily meet the above criteria, but were still included in our analysis. [16-18] In two studies by Gauthier et al. RDI was defined as the combination of apneas, hypopneas and arousals per hour of sleep, [16] [17] while Gotsopoulos et al. defined AHI as the combination of apneas, hypopneas, and arousals per hour of sleep. [18] Articles were excluded if they focused on diagnosis, described the use of OAs to treat central or complex sleep apnea, or if they were studies on pediatric patients. A total of 51 articles met these criteria and were used for data extraction, meta-analysis, and grading.