Prevalence of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Risk for Brazilian Civil Aircraft Pilots
Background and purpose: In the context of air transport activity in Brazil there is no preventive regulation of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSAS).The aim is to identify Brazilian Civilian Pilots (BCP) with the possibility of having OSAS through responses to different questionnaires, validated and used worldwide as indicators of this disease, and propose the inclusion of these screening tools during the annual medical examination of health .Method: After signing the Informed Consent, 262 BCP were interviewed.The interviews included the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), the Berlin Questionnaire (BQ) and the STOP-BANG questionnaire (SBQ).Pilots that exceeded daily working hours or did not comply with the rest time required by law, pilots of international flights and users of sleep-inducing drugs were excluded from the study. Results:Positive results for OSAS were found in 16% of the cases according to the BQ, 37.4% according to the SBQ, and 11.45% were considered at risk in both questionnaires.A weak correlation was found between the answers to the questionnaires and the ESS.weak to moderate agreement was observed between the SBQ and the BQ to suggest the presence of OSAS (Weighted Kappa = 0.263, 95%CI 0.153 -0.373) and also the odds ratio of 5.58 ).