ArticleJournal of thoracic disease2016
Continuous positive airway pressure therapy in non-sleepy patients with obstructive sleep apnea: results of a meta-analysis.
Article in Journal of thoracic disease, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Home-testing devices for diagnosing obstructive sleep apnoea hypopnoea syndrome - a systematic review and economic evaluation.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2026Pooled it
- Effect of tirzepatide treatment on patient-reported outcomes among SURMOUNT-OSA participants with obstructive sleep apnea and obesity.Sleep medicine · 2025Trial
- The effects of continuous positive airway pressure and mandibular advancement therapy on metabolic outcomes of patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea: a randomized controlled study.Sleep & breathing = Schlaf & Atmung · 2021Trial
- Long-term use of continuous positive airway pressure therapy in coronary artery disease patients with nonsleepy obstructive sleep apnea.Clinical cardiology · 2017Trial
- A pilot study of high-intensity interval training and continuous positive airway pressure on vascular health in Thai adults with obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, and type 2 diabetes.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Detection of obstructive sleep apnea in young patients suffering from coronary artery disease by performing portable polysomnography studies.Medical journal, Armed Forces India · 2022Article
- Non-sleepy obstructive sleep apnoea: to treat or not to treat?European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2019Review
- Con: should asymptomatic patients with moderate-to-severe OSA be treated?Breathe (Sheffield, England) · 2019Article
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea With or Without Excessive Daytime Sleepiness: Clinical and Experimental Data-Driven Phenotyping.Frontiers in neurology · 2018Article
- Preface for the 3rd Clinical Update Sleep, 23rd February 2018, Royal College of Physicians, London, UK: year in review.Journal of thoracic disease · 2018Article
- The role of sleepiness on arterial stiffness improvement after CPAP therapy in males with obstructive sleep apnea: a prospective cohort study.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2017Article
- Validated Measures of Insomnia, Function, Sleepiness, and Nasal Obstruction in a CPAP Alternatives Clinic Population.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAlthough continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) has become the first line of therapy for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), it remains controversial whether non-sleepy patients could benefit from CPAP treatment.
methodsWe searched the online databases Medline, Embase, the Cochrane library and the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials to select eligible control trials, including non-sleepy OSA patients and those patients treated by CPAP or either sham CPAP or no CPAP.
resultsSeven eligible studies (1,541 patients) were included. The pooled estimates of the mean changes after CPAP treatment for the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were -0.51 mmHg (95% CI, -3.39 to 2.38 mmHg; P=0.73) and -0.92 mmHg (95% CI, -1.39 to -0.46 mmHg; P<0.001), respectively. CPAP should not improve subjective sleepiness in the minimally symptomatic OSA patients, as the change in the Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS) was -0.51 (95% CI, -1.68 to 0.67; P=0.397). However, CPAP can effectively reduce AHI or ODI by 15.57 events/h (95% CI, -29.32 to -1.82; P=0.026) compared to controls. However, the risk of cardiovascular events did not significantly decrease [odds ratio (OR), 0.80; 95% CI, 0.50 to 1.26; P=0.332] in the end.
conclusionsCPAP treatment can reduce OSA severity in non-sleepy patients and minutely reduce the DBP, but CPAP seems to have no overall beneficial effects on subjective sleepiness, SBP, or cardiovascular risk.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.