Study populations
The study group was made up of people who were diagnosed with OSA between 2008 and 2011, and who had a diagnostic history based on International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) Code G473 10th Edition. Furthermore, for a more accurate analysis, the following exclusion criteria were established: 1) Patients diagnosed with OSA between 2011 and 2019. 2) Patients who had ICD-10 codes J381, J382, or J383 or BVFL prior to being diagnosed with OSA. The control (non-OSA) group consisted of patients who had not been diagnosed with OSA and were matched using Propensity Score (PS) matching. PS was estimated with age in mind to ensure that only patients with comparable tendencies to the OSA group were included and to prevent any bias from confounders.
The control (non-OSA) group consisted of patients who had not been diagnosed with OSA and were matched using Propensity Score (PS) matching. PS was estimated with age, gender, economic position, and comorbidities in mind to ensure that only patients with similar tendencies to the OSA group were included and to eliminate any bias from confounders. Non-OSA groupings were then chosen using greedy method matching based on this PS. The non-OSA group had 8,415 patients in total.(Figure 1)