Improvements in patient-reported outcomes after neuromuscular electrical stimulation therapy for snoring and mild sleep apnea

In a real-world cohort of 472 patients with obstructive sleep apnea, NMES therapy is linked to large improvements in sleep disturbance and sleep-related impairment, with mean changes of -6.1 and -10.0.

• Why it matters: Daytime patient-reported outcomes beyond snoring and sleepiness are not well characterized in large real-world samples, despite prior randomized evidence for OSA-related symptom improvements.
• What they did: Clinical pre-to-post data from 472 NMES-treated patients were analyzed with Bayesian linear mixed models for PHQ8, PROMIS-SD-4a, PROMIS-SRI-4a, and FOSQ, using posterior probabilities for symptom change and exceeding MCID.
• The result: Posterior probabilities for improvement were highest for sleep disturbance and sleep-related impairment (99.8–100%) and depression (mean change -3.5), while functioning showed low improvement probability (60.9%); mood and sleep measures exceeded MCID with high probabilities (86–91%).

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