Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) disturbances are very prevalent in developed countries. Since it was estimated over 10 years ago, the prevalence of SDB is probably higher now because of the dramatic increase in body weight in the populations of these countries.¹ Given the large increase in mortality and morbidity outcomes associated with the diagnosis of SDB, the diagnosis of a nocturnal breathing disorder should no longer be confirmed solely by conventional in-laboratory polysomnographic recordings. This justifies the need for abbreviated monitoring during sleep to be part of the assessment of SDB and the tremendous effort developed by the sleep research community to evaluate the diagnostic value of abbreviated recordings.

The study by Jobin et al² reported in this issue of Thorax (see p 422) is the first comparative study that does not use in-laboratory polysomnographic recordings as the gold standard, and is thus an important step towards evaluating the merits of abbreviated recording techniques. This is a major upheaval in the field of sleep medicine, and opens the way to realistic assessments of abbreviated recording techniques in real-life conditions that avoid costly, time-consuming in-laboratory polysomnographic recordings. It is, however, reasonable to wonder whether the authors should have proceeded more cautiously by starting with level 2 monitoring techniques (ie, an unattended complete polysomnographic study) as a reference, which would allow the influence of home monitoring on cardiorespiratory variables to …