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Towards an integrated clinical network of care for children with sleep disordered breathing
  1. Heather E Elphick
  1. Department of Respiratory Medicine, Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Heather E Elphick, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK; h.elphick{at}nhs.net

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In this edition of Thorax, the new British Thoracic Society (BTS) guideline for diagnosing and monitoring paediatric sleep disordered breathing (SDB)1 is published. The primary aim of the guideline is to promote clinical networking and to equip paediatricians in secondary care, with an interest in sleep, with the skills and knowledge to run a local service. The tertiary referral centre would offer support to the local service with more complex diagnostic testing, clinical discussion and advice underpinned by expert physiologists and specialists within a respiratory and ventilation team with wider access to neurology and neurodisability expertise. While this approach is aspirational and reliant on appropriate training as well as the introduction of the BTS guideline,1 the recent approval by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) of a Special Interest training module for sleep is another positive step towards this goal.

In 2009, the RCPCH working party of Sleep Physiology and Respiratory Control Disorders of Childhood (SPARCDIC)2 set standards of care for children with disorders of sleep physiology to improve awareness of sleep problems …

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Footnotes

  • Funding The author has not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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