| Advantages |
| Accessibility |
| Improved patient access |
| Easy self-application of monitoring (no technician required) |
| Possible impact on waiting list |
| Cost |
| Acceptability for patients |
| Patients with possible anxiety or who are uncomfortable sleeping alone in a laboratory bed, under medical guidance |
| Patient sleeps in his/her own bed |
| The effect of environmental factors on sleep variables is still unknown (the sleep pattern is probably more representative of everyday sleep) |
| Disadvantages |
| Reliability |
| Unattended portable monitoring is subject to data loss |
| Equipment malfunction |
| Sensor disconnections |
| Patient or family interference |
| Telephone-line interference (during modem transfer or playback) |
| Diagnostic limitations |
| Nonsleep-apnoea diseases |
| Underestimate of the AHI |
| No electrophysiological signals needed to score and stage sleep, no detection of hypopnoeas associated with arousals and no evaluation of the quality of sleep |
| PMD can vary according to: |
| Number and types of signals |
| Sensors used |
| Methods of scoring |
| Criteria used to define respiratory events |
| Cut-off of the AHI used to define diagnosis and severity of OSAS |
AHI: apnoea/hypopnoea index; OSAS: obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome.