Length of Individual Apnea Events Is Increased by Supine Position and Modulated by Severity of Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Figure 5

(a) Positional sleeping time adjusted distributions of the durations of individual desaturation events in supine and nonsupine positions in different OSA severity categories and (b) distributions in nonsupine and supine positions as a function of OSA severity. In mild and moderate OSA categories the median durations of the desaturation events are longer in nonsupine position than in supine position. The differences in the distributions of desaturation event durations are statistically significant in all OSA severity categories based on mixed model analysis.

(a)

(b)