DO PEDIATRIC INDIVIDUALS WITH ADENOID HYPERTROPHY HAVE DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES IN BRAIN ANATOMICAL STRUCTURES? A RETROSPECTIVE MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING STUDY

Objective: Adenoid hypertrophy (AH) can cause changes in the brain by causing sleep-disordered breathing and obstructive sleep apnea. However, it has not been investigated whether AH affects the brain anatomy as a single factor independent of these diseases. In this study, we investigated the effects of AH on brain development using the estimated brain age (EBA) method. Method: This retrospective study included 55 individuals (39 males) with AH, aged 1-12 years, and 55 individuals of similar age and sex without AH. We used the adenoid-nasopharyngeal ratio (ANR: ratio of adenoid thickness to nasopharynx width) to detect AH. We used volBrain's BrainStructureAges (BSA) pipeline for EBA on brain anatomical structures. We compared the data with SPSS (ver.28). Results: ANR were higher in AH group (0.66±0.06) than control group (0.40±0.09) (p