The STOP-Bang questionnaire
STOP-Bang is an eight-item yes-or-no screening tool for obstructive sleep apnea. It is a screening instrument, not a diagnosis: it estimates the probability that a sleep study would find apnea.
What it measures
The eight items cover snoring, tiredness, observed pauses in breathing, blood pressure, body mass index, age, neck circumference and sex. Each scores one point, giving a total from 0 to 8.
The point of it is triage. A high score means the odds of moderate to severe apnea are high enough that testing is clearly warranted; a low score makes that less likely without ruling it out. The AASM is explicit that questionnaires and prediction algorithms must not be used to diagnose sleep apnea without a sleep study.
Why you cannot take it here yet
This questionnaire is not on the site yet
It is a licensed instrument, and we are not going to reproduce it without permission from the people who created and validated it. Until that licence is in place, the office can go through it with you on the telephone, which is better anyway because someone can explain what your answer means.
Call (614) 898-9340What the scores mean
| Score | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 | Low risk of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea |
| 3 to 4 | Intermediate risk; further criteria are used to classify |
| 5 to 8 | High risk of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea |
Source: Chung F et al., “STOP-Bang questionnaire: a practical approach to screen for obstructive sleep apnea”, CHEST 2016. As the score rises from the 0 to 2 band to the 7 to 8 band, the reported probability of moderate to severe apnea rises from about 18 per cent to about 60 per cent.
What would happen to your answers
When this does go live it will run entirely inside your browser. Nothing you select would be sent anywhere, saved anywhere, or written into the web address. There would be no box asking for your email to “send your results”, because that would turn a symptom score into health information sitting on somebody’s server.
Your result would appear on screen with a telephone number, and closing the tab would discard it.
Related: sleep apnea, snoring, sleep testing.