Justin Colamaria with his mom, Tina Foye, and the breathing machine that… (Victoria Arocho for The…)
Chandra McGuire thought she’d have to learn to live with her 2-year-old son’s snoring and pauses in breathing that roused him, and her, two to four times a night. “He’s always been hyperactive and had a very quick temper,” McGuire said. “His doctors kept telling me it was colic, but when you can’t sleep it affects everything else.”
Lately, though, her son Francis Massey V has been sleeping through the night for the first time in his life, two months after his enlarged tonsils and adenoids were surgically removed at Boston Children’s Hospital, a procedure his doctors hoped would open his airways and help him breathe better during sleep.
“His personality before and after the surgery is night and day,” said McGuire, 36, a massage therapist from Middleborough. “He’ll pay attention to me reading a book, and he’s awesome in day care. He’s not set off by the smallest things like he used to be.”
While nearly one-third of children experience sleep issues at some point in their lives, about 2 to 4 percent have structural defects such as Francis had that cause breathing difficulties during sleep, often marked by snoring, gasping for breath, or pauses in breathing. The condition, called sleep apnea, is being treated more frequently at Boston Children’s and other pediatric sleep centers because of increased screening by pediatricians — who are advised by the American Academy of Pediatrics to ask about snoring at well visits — and a tripling in pediatric obesity, a known risk factor for sleep apnea.
A March study published in the journal Pediatrics surveyed 8,000 British parents of children ages 7 and under and found that children who snored or had other breathing difficulties during sleep were 50 percent more likely to have a behavioral issue such as hyperactivity, frequent temper tantrums, or anxiety compared with those who didn’t. Researchers speculate that when the brain gets too little oxygen during sleep, it may have less than optimal functioning in areas such as the prefrontal cortex that govern decision-making and self-control. And preliminary results from a new clinical trial conducted by Boston Children’s and Brigham and Women’s researchers show that surgical removal of enlarged tonsils and adenoids in kids with sleep apnea results in marked improvements in behavioral problems compared with those who don’t have the surgery.
Other research, mostly in adults, suggests that sleep apnea, if left untreated, can raise the risk of hypertension, diabetes, and depression; later in life, it’s been linked to heart failure, heart attacks, strokes, and, a new study suggests, cancer.
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