Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Endosc. Nov 16, 2016; 8(19): 697-700
Published online Nov 16, 2016. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v8.i19.697
Patients presenting for colonoscopy: A great opportunity to screen for sleep apnea
Glenn Harvin, Eslam Ali, Amit Raina, William Leland, Sabeen Abid, Zahid Vahora, Hossein Movahed, Sumyra Kachru, Rick Tee
Glenn Harvin, Eslam Ali, Amit Raina, William Leland, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27834, United States
Sabeen Abid, Zahid Vahora, Hossein Movahed, Sumyra Kachru, Rick Tee, Vidant Medical Center, Greenville, NC 27834, United States
Author contributions: All the authors contributed to the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the East Carolina University and Vidant Medical Center Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from all the patients prior to study inclusion.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no potential conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: Informed consent was not obtained for data sharing, and no additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Glenn Harvin, MD, Assistant Professor, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, 521 Moye Boulevard, Greenville, NC 27834, United States. harving@ecu.edu
Telephone: +1-252-7445681 Fax: +1-252-8160801
Received: June 7, 2016
Peer-review started: June 12, 2016
First decision: July 11, 2016
Revised: July 29, 2016
Accepted: September 6, 2016
Article in press: September 8, 2016
Published online: November 16, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: We sought to determine the prevalence of patients at risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and the feasibility of screening patients for sleep apnea presenting for a routine colonoscopy to our outpatient endoscopy facility. All patients were screened for OSA with the Berlin questionnaire prior to the procedure. Overall, screening patients for sleep apnea at the time of a colonoscopy offers a unique opportunity not only to screen for colon cancer but also to identify patients at high risk for OSA who should undergo further testing.