Daytime attentional deficits and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome: assessment of cognitive abilities.

Summary Excessive daytime sleepiness is the main complaint of patients with sleep apnea syndrome. Therefore, daytime vigilance is the attentional component most often investigated during this pathology. The objective of this work was to highlight the extent of attentional deficits in apneic patients, in order to understand if only sleepiness could explain the cognitive impairment of these patients. Our results showed that all the attentional functions were deficient, vigilance, but also selective and divided attention as well as the executive control of attention could be altered in a specific and isolated way. Our research conducted in a real driving situation also showed that these patients had a marked increase in their reaction times while driving and that these performances were correlated with those of a divided attention test carried out in the laboratory. Taken together, these results indicate that apneic patients have multiple attentional deficits not only involving daytime vigilance.