Insomnia is a highly prevalent, often debilitating, and economically burdensome form of sleep disturbance caused by various situational, medical, emotional, environmental and behavioral factors. Although several consensually-derived nosologies have described numerous insomnia phenotypes, research concerning these phenotypes has been greatly hampered by a lack of widely accepted operational research diagnostic criteria (RDC) for their definition. The lack of RDC has, in turn, led to inconsistent research findings for most phenotypes largely due to the variable definitions used for their ascertainment. Given this problem, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) commissioned a Work Group (WG) to review the literature and identify those insomnia phenotypes that appear most valid and tenable. In addition, this WG was asked to derive standardized RDC for these phenotypes and recommend assessment procedures for their ascertainment. This report outlines the WG's findings, the insomnia RDC derived, and research assessment procedures the WG recommends for identifying study participants who meet these RDC.

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One hundred fifty-five unselected obstructive sleep apneic patients seen in succession had cephalometric roentgenograms and polygraphic recordings performed. These patients were compared to a group of 41 subjects who had consulted orthodontists for malocclusion and had no clinical indication of sleep apnea. The cephalometric landmarks were also compared to those published as normative data in the literature. The limits of "normalcy" were conservatively defined as mean +/- 2 standard deviations. Only two obstructive sleep apneic patients had normal cephalometric landmarks and 150 of the 155 patients had at least two significantly different landmarks from the normative data in the literature. The common findings were a retroposition of the mandible, a different cranial base flexure with a nasion-sella-basion angle more acute than expected, and a displacement of the hyoid bone to a lower position than expected. These combined changes reduced the space occupied by soft tissues anchored on the skull and mandible, and the length of the soft palate was increased.

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