Background: Executive dysfunction (ED) is often observed in subjects diagnosed with obstructive sleep
apnea (OSA), but their assessment requires facilities that are not always available.We aim to evaluate the
extent to which Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) discriminates ED in newly diagnosed, untreated, and
without-comorbidity OSA patients.
Methods: Sixty subjects participated in the study. Of these, 40 (31 males and 9 females) were newly
diagnosed for OSA through full-night polysomnography (apnea/hypopnea index; M . 39.01, SD . 27.16),
untreated, with a mean age of 54.50 years (SD . 8.90), while the remaining 20 (15 males and 5 females)
had no symptoms of OSA (M . 51.60 years, SD . 10.70). The instruments used were the following:
Questionnaire for Sleep Apnea Risk, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Mini-Mental State Examination, and FAB.
Results: The group with OSA exhibited significantly lower values in the FAB global score (p . 0.003) and
in Conceptualization (p . 0.001) and Mental Flexibility (p . 0.009) subtests. ROC analysis showed
adequate discriminative capacity for the FAB global score (AUC . 0.74) and for Conceptualization
(AUC . 0.75) and Mental Flexibility (AUC . 0.70) scores.
Conclusions: The FAB is a short and no-time-consuming tool that can be used to investigate the presence
of ED in untreated OSA patients with no comorbidities, providing clinicians with a simple and effective
way of detecting the presence of this dysfunction and allowing a more informed decision for the need of
a full neuropsychological assessment.
