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Sleep Apnea vs. ADHD

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Is there anyone who suspected their child had ADHD, had the child diagnosed with it and then discovered that it was sleep apnea instead?

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/14/2003 - 6:35 PM

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My son has sleep apnea and uses a bipap machine at night. He had/had some impulsive behavior but not classic ADHD.

However any pulmonologist who treats sleep apnea will tell you about kids who are misdiagnosed with ADHD when they have sleep apnea. If you have access to a medical library, you could search for a couple of articles about studies done in Kentucky. I think the researchers used 1st graders who were doing poorly in school (can’t remember all their criteria) and got parental permission to do sleep studies and found a correlation with undiagnosed sleep apnea.

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