Implications Of Sleep-Disordered Breathing In Students With Intellectual Disabilities: Systematic Review

In recent years research on sleep-disordered breathing in children and adolescents with typical development have been expanded. Research has shown that poor quality sleep interferes with the physical and intellectual abilities of the human being. What then would be the influence of this disorder on students with intellectual disabilities? The study aims to verify and analyze the influence of respiratory sleep disorders in students with intellectual disabilities in scientific publications. This is a systematic design of a qualitative nature. The survey was conducted from 2000 to 2016. The articles were indexed in the main databases: EBSCOhost, DOAJ, ERIC and SciELO Brazil. The en descriptors were: Sleep-disordered breathing and learning disability; Sleep-disordered breathing and Intellectual disability; Sleep-disordered breathing and Etiology intellectual disability; Sleep-disordered breathing and Intellectual deficit. The search was also conducted in English. Based on these descriptors, forty-three surveys were located. However, only seven articles met the requirements chosen for this study. From these articles, four are experimental type of studies, two of them were literature review and one was longitudinal type of study. The review revealed that research on the influence of sleep disorders on children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities is recent and still very limited and the sleep-disordered breathing significantly interferes with life quality as well as developmental and learning aspects of students with intellectual disabilities. This study underscores the need for Brazilian research in respiratory sleep disorders in the area of special education.