NCT06776237

Point of Care Ultrasound in Pregnant Women (PoCUS-OB)

Point of Care Ultrasound (PoCUS) as a Tool to Evaluate Patients at High Risk of Obstructive Sleep Apnea in the Obstetric Population

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 100 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University Health Network, Toronto · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Pregnant women with gestational age more than 20 weeks are at risk of developing Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). OSA is a common underdiagnosed comorbid condition in pregnant women associated with adverse maternal and fetal outcomes. It is a severe form of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), featured with repeated episodes of airflow reduction or cessation during sleep. It exists in different severity among pregnant women and maybe worsen over the course of the pregnancy. If OSA remains untreated, it can complicate the pregnancy by developing heart failure, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, and hypertension. To determine the OSA during pregnancy has become an important issue to reduce the morbidity related to it. Currently, Polysomnography (PSG) remains the gold standard for diagnosing OSA, but scheduling and logistics remain significant impediments to accessibility for pregnant women. Home sleep apnea tests (HST) is a promising alternative but are expensive and not widely available. Point of care ultrasonography (PoCUS) is being increasingly used across specialties. Our preliminary data support the feasibility of PoCUS in the preoperative setting and increasing the diagnostic accuracy and the specificity for moderate to severe OSA (AHI \>15 events per h) when combined with the STOP-Bang questionnaire (cut-off \>5). Given that HST shows high levels of agreement with PSG for the diagnosis of OSA and are significantly less burdensome than PSG, investigators will evaluate the PoCUS airway examination against the HST for the diagnosis of OSA in pregnant women at high risk of OSA.

Detailed description

This project is to define the range of mouth and tongue dimensions and to visualize airway structures by using ultrasound. Given that Home sleep apnea tests (HST) shows high levels of accuracy for the diagnosis of Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), investigators hypothesize that the Point of care ultrasonography (PoCUS) airway examination against the HST for the diagnosis of OSA in pregnant women at the high-risk can, 1. reliably visualize upper airway structures that are responsible for OSA; 2. objectively measure airway soft tissue thickness and dimensions; and 3. identify pregnant women with moderate-severe OSA.

Conditions

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DIAGNOSTIC_TEST	PoCUS	Participants after getting recruited will be asked for an ultrasonography of the neck. It will take around 30 minutes. At home, participants will be asked to wear a portable sleep study device overnight, to perform home sleep study. Although these devices are noninvasive and safe, they are not routinely used as a standard of care in the pregnant patient population.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-01-15
• Primary completion: 2026-06-01
• Completion: 2026-12-01
• First posted: 2025-01-15
• Last updated: 2025-01-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada