Temporal association between leg movements and respiratory events in patients with obstructive sleep apnea: description and differences between the AASM and WASM scoring criteria

Purpose To describe the temporal association between leg movements (LMs) and respiratory events in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and to quantify the difference in scoring respiratory-related leg movement (RRLM) between the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) criterion and the criterion recommended by the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM). Methods Patients with OSA who presented with > 10 LMs of any type per hour of sleep were included in this study. For each participant, RRLMs were scored using both the AASM criterion and the recommended WASM criterion. The occurrence of LMs in relation to respiratory events and the difference in scoring RRLM between the AASM criterion and the criterion recommended by the WASM were quantified. Results In 32 patients enrolled, mean age was 48.1 ± 11.0 years and 78% were men. LMs were significantly more frequent after respiratory events, followed by before respiratory events, and were rare during respiratory events ( P