Characterization of the Tongue in Children With Obstructive Sleep-disordered Breathing

The tongue plays a key role in maintaining upper airway patency during sleep, mainly through the genioglossus, the principal pharyngeal dilator muscle. Its dysfunction may be linked to the development of obstructive sleep-disordered breathing (oSDB), a condition affecting more than one in ten children and associated with cardiovascular and cognitive consequences. Although adenotonsillectomy remains the treatment of choice, it fails in a substantial proportion of cases because of persistent obstruction at other sites, the tongue base being involved in one third of these cases. Therefore, a better characterization of the tongue in children with oSDB is needed, since the extent to which its structure and function contribute to upper airway obstruction in this population remains largely unknown. Our team has established the reproducibility of tongue function measurements in healthy children and is currently building a reference database. What is still lacking is an assessment of tongue structure and function in children with oSDB. Such data would allow comparison with healthy children, thereby improving the understanding of oSDB pathophysiology and informing clinical management. Primary objective: To describe tongue structure and function in children with oSDB. Secondary objective: To compare tongue structure and function between children with oSDB and healthy children, using data from a previous study conducted in healthy children (TMAC study, UCLouvain).