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The Berlin Questionnaire (BQ) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) are two of the widely used screening instruments for subjects suffering from sleep disorders.

To determine the predictive accuracy of the BQ and ESS in the subjects who were admitted to our sleep clinic, using overnight polysomnography as the ‘gold standard’.

The BQ and ESS were performed to 1450 subjects hospitalized in our sleep clinic for polysomnographic evaluation.

One thousand two hundred thirty of 1450 subjects (84.8%) had apnea–hypopnea index (AHI) ≥ 5, and 70.5% of them were classified as being at high risk of sleep apnea with BQ and 45.9% of them were classified as having excessive daytime sleepiness with ESS. Being in the high‐risk group with the self‐reported, BQ predicted an AHI ≥ 5 with a sensitivity of 0.73 and a specificity of 0.44, vs a sensitivity of 0.46 and a specificity …