Sleep Medicine Clinical and Surgical Training during Otolaryngology Residency: A National Survey of Otolaryngology Residency Programs

Abstract

Objective: The vast majority of otolaryngologists are involved in the medical and surgical care of patients with obstructive sleep apnea. ABOTO residency curriculum has quite extensive sleep medicine requirements. We sought to assess resident training experiences in adult sleep medicine and sleep surgery during their residency in the United States. Method: This Internet survey study was emailed to the program directors from 103 US Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-approved otolaryngology residency programs in 2010. Results: A total of 47 (46%) program directors responded. Only 24% of programs had faculty members who spent more than 50% of their clinical time on adult sleep medicine/surgery. The majority of programs (65%) had total training time less than 0.6 month during the residency training. While most residents were well prepared in commonly performed procedures for OSA, the training on hypopharyngeal surgeries such as hyoid suspension (51%), tongue suspension (40%), and geniotubercle advancement (26%) were less adequate. Only 29% of programs taught their residents both the interpretation of the study report and the original sleep study data. Conclusion: This survey suggests that current residency training in adult sleep medicine and sleep surgery is suboptimal to keep residents up to date with the evolution in this field in the majority of otolaryngology programs. The teaching on the evaluation and various therapeutic approaches should be improved during residency training.