Ricerc@Sapienza

Evidences suggest that changes in brain connectivity after stroke might facilitate SDB cause of reorganization of brain networks involved either in breathing or in wake control thus influencing collapsibility of the airway during sleep, when the general muscle tone is reduced. This study is focused on measuring the difference of the hard palate and the tip of the epiglottis (OPAL) dimension between stroke and non-stroke patients affected by SDB as respect to healthy controls (HC), so as misured respectibelly by structural MRI and ENT (ear-nose-Throat) evaluation. These information may help to differentiate between stroke cases affected by SDB since before the event (best responders to CPAP treatment), to those who manifest the SDB disturb as a consequence of altered brain netwoks involved in the control of breathing during sleep. A consecutive series of patients, either affected by chronic stroke or SDB, will be asked to take part in the study. An equal number of age/gender HC will be included. All subjects will be submitted to structural MRI imaging of the brain and neck, to ORL standardazed measuments (ENT), and to Polisomnography (PSG). SPSS version 23 will be used for data analyses. Age, gender, BMI, and oropharyngeal airway (OPA) morphology will be assessed between SDB severity, stroke-specific SDB, and HC using one-way analysis of variance. Pearson¿s r will be adopted for correlation analysis. All parametric values will be expressed as mean ± SD, 2 tailed. Statistical significance level is set at p