Dear Colleagues,

Obstructive sleep apnea is an increasingly common sleep breathing disorder with an estimated prevalence of 55% in some countries. Intermittent hypoxia leads to excessive daytime sleepiness, cognitive deficits, and cardiovascular and metabolic complications.

The pathogenesis of OSA is multifactorial, and four physiological traits have been recognized, which include upper airway collapsibility, poor muscle responsiveness, low arousal threshold, and high loop gain. The disease severity measured by apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) with PSG does not correlate with the clinical symptoms. Therefore, it is necessary to consider OSA traits, physiological variables, biomarkers, and comorbidities to target treatment in a personalized approach.

This Special Issue aims to collect articles on novel methods to recognize physiological OSA traits, a novel technology using signals which include heart rate variability (HRV), pulse wave amplitude drops (PWAD), pulse transit time (PTT), and hypoxic burden in OSA patients. We are interested in original research, pilot studies, and systematic reviews or meta-analyses, providing new insights into the use of novel techniques for evaluating adult and pediatric patients with OSA. There is also growing interest in non-invasive phenotyping methods and imaging and in machine learning in evaluation. We also accept studies on non-CPAP treatments such as surgery, mandibular splints, neurostimulation, and pharmacotherapy in a single or multimodality approach.

Dr. Venkata Koka
Prof. Dr. Andrea De Vito
Dr. Umakanth Katwa
Guest Editors

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• obstructive sleep apnea
• sleep-disordered breathing
• phenotyping
• hypoxic burden
• Imaging HRV
• PTT
• PWAD
• CPAP
• OSA surgery
• drugs
• mandibular splints