Hello everyone,

I'm new here and trying to get more info for my 5 yr old son.

Several months ago we took out 5 yr old for a sleep study due to his severe nightwaking which did not respond to any behavioral interventions.

He was diagnosed with moderate obstructive sleep apnea.  We took him to an ENT who reccomended his adnoids come out but was insistent that the tonsils not be removed because they were "too small to be causing trouble."  My son had an adnoidectomy in April of this yr.

We just had a follow up sleep study which showed that my son no longer had any apneas and his O2 was normal all night with no desaturations.  His CO2 however was between 50-54 for 68% of the night due to shallow breathing.  The sleep MD did not make any strong reccomendations as she said that there are no studies of CO2 levels in "normal children" and perhaps many children have shallow breathing during sleep with CO2 retention.

I spoke with the ENT who said maybe its the tonsils,  but he didn't reccomend more sugery and said that my son should have a follow up sleep study at some time in the future.

If there are no studies of CO2 levels in sleeping children I'm not sure where this is all going.  My son's adnoidectomy was traumatic for him and I don't want to put him through any more.

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

Thanks Diana

Starting to dig up some studies for you, here is one that may be of interest:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/117/3/741

http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/168/12/1540

Thank you RAM for those articles.  The  first one made me feel a lot better because my son is comparable to these so called normal children.  The discussion about sleep changes for children just starting school was especially interesting as my son just turned 5 and will start kindergarden in the fall.

Thanks again

Diana