Study On Health Education Of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome For The Middle-aged And Elderly

Background:Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is a serious chronic disease with thesymptoms of low SpO₂,hypercapnia,sleep structure confused,quit breathing,choke,headache,dizzy,sleepiness in day time,debilitation.And the worst is sudden death.Currently,the first line of treatment for most cases of OSAS is continuous positive airway pressure therapy. The effectiveness of CPAP therapy relies upon regular use by the patient.According to some researches,the CPAP compliance is less than 63%,but the number of hours per night inceases at least 1 hour after accepting 2 hours health education every six months in more than 90% patients.OSAS is considered to be a lifestyle-related disease,the morbility of overweight and obese patients were significantly higher than normal population.No control diet,less exercise,drinking and smoking are the main characteristic of their lifestyle.Therefore,behavioral intervention as an economic,effectiv way has been widely recognized by more and more researchers including home and abroad. Enhancing the knowledge of OSAS and behavior cognition are the most important turning point to impove behavior and treatment compliance. Clearly, the investigation of the relationship between apnea knowledge-beliefs and treatment compliance requires that we have suitable tools for assessing patients' understanding of OSAS and CPAP and their attitudes towards treatment.There are some health education assessment tools made by researchers from Australia including the Apnea Sleep Knowledge and the Apnea Beliefs Scale.Comparing with the research in foreign countries, the OSAS health education assessment tools are insufficient in China. So it is necessary for medical professionals to do further research in this field.Objective:1 The purposes of this study were to understand the OSAS knowledge ,health beliefs of the middle-aged and elderly to provide evidences of health education and evaluate the effect of OSAS health education program.2 Evaluate the reliability and validity of the Apnea Knowledge Test(AKT),the Apnea Beliefs Scale(ABS) in testing on a sample of Chinese middle-aged and elderly individuals ,so that the Scales would be used in OSAS health education asintruments.Methods:1 From March 2008 to September 2008,91 OSAS patients aged from 45 to 77 years(M= 53.68±9.06 years) in Zhujiang Hospital and the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University participated in the study.2 The AKT and ABS were developed by Smith S et al and the Health Behaviors Questionnaire designed by the authors were tested on the subjects.And then,all subjects were given some written materials,a presentation and individual instruction. The above instruments were used to evaluate the effect of pre-healtheducation and post-health education one month later.3 The statistical methods were : Cronbach'sα,Pearson correlation,Item analysis,Paired-samples T test,Independent-samples T test,One-way ANOVA,R×C x²text,Descriptive analysis and Constituent ratio.All the datas obtained were statistically analyzed by computer with sofeware package SPSS13.0 for windows.There was the statisticl significance when P <0.05 Results:1 The levels of the OSAS knowledge,health beliefs among the subjects were not high. There were not significant differences in the levels in terms of their age,educational background,gender,and occupation.There were significant difference in smoking and drinking in terms of their level of AKT and ABS.2 The health education program was effective in improvement of the AKT, ABS and CPAP.3 The Cronbach' s alpha reliability coefficients of the AKTand ABS were 0.76 and 0.66 respectively.The test-retest Pearson's correlation coefficients ranged from 0.96 to 0.98.T test analysis of the different between 27% higher scores and 27% lower scores of the AKT demonstrated its discrimination validity very high.Conclusions:1 Health education not only can enhance the knowledge of OSAS,health beliefs and compliance of CPAP therapy,but also impove infaust lifestyle.2 The OSAS health education of the subjects who scored low in AKT and ABS should be payed attention. The OSAS health education should be focused on risk factors and susceptible persons.3 Health behaviors promotion is a long process which needs good plan and participation of all people.4The study indicates that the Chinese version of AKT and ABS is suitable and helpful for OSAS health education in the Chinese middle-aged and elderly,but thefurther research should be done in a wild range age and districts.