Adults with OSA highly rate textile-made positive airway pressure mask
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Key takeaways:
- Some patients with sleep apnea have low positive airway pressure device adherence because of discomfort.
- The textile-made mask was preferred over the patients’ own mask for long-term use.
A positive airway pressure mask made of textile material was well received by adults with obstructive sleep apnea but did not change device usage hours, according to research presented at SLEEP 2024.
In this study, Manolito Pablo, of ResMed Proprietary Ltd, and colleagues assessed 120 adults (women, n = 49) with OSA using PAP therapy for at least 6 months to find out if a prototype tube-up nasal cradle mask (WSN) is more favorable than the mask the patient has based on device attributes and use at three time periods (days 7, 30 and 90).
As Healio previously reported, CPAP masks can be uncomfortable and negatively impact adherence. Comfort was an important element considered in design of the WSN mask, which led to it being made of a textile material, according to the abstract.
Researchers asked patients how they felt about each mask through an 11-point Likert Scale. A higher score meant a higher rating.
Median ratings of the WSN mask and the patients’ masks significantly differed (P < .05) from each other across five device attributes, all of which demonstrated more favor to the WSN mask: ease of use (10 vs. 9), feeling of material (10 vs. 9), overall performance (10 vs. 9), comfort (9.5 vs. 8.5) and seal (9 vs. 8).
According to researchers, patients expressed that the WSN mask was soft and had a pleasant texture.
When asked which mask they liked more for long-term use after day 90, 92.6% of patients said the WSN mask.
Lastly, researchers found similar PAP usage hours between the two masks at day 30 and 90, noting that this was a population with “very high compliance at the start of the study.”
“Additional research with PAP users who have low compliance may be useful to determine if the WSN mask has an effect on adherence rate in this population,” Pablo and colleagues wrote.