Night-to-Night Variability of Sleep Respiratory Pauses in Normal Infants

Abstract
Pneumograms have been recorded for several (6-14) consecutive nights in 11 normal children aged 1-257 days. They enabled to assess greater or equal to 5 seconds respiratory pauses. No statistical differences were found between the number of respiratory pauses per hour recorded during subsequent nights on each subject. Statistically significant (p < 0.001) differences were found between the children either in the number of pauses or in their intervals. However, the experimental protocol does not allow to assess whether these discrepancies have a genetic, or maturational, or eventually an environmental origin.