Abstract
Good quality sleep is critical in children’s overall health and development. Children and young people who are hospitalised are vulnerable to sleep fragmentation which may impact their recovery from illness. Hospitals have high ambient light, noise and distractions around the bedside. Although measures are in place to minimise disruptions to ward-based sleep investigations, these factors can impact the quality of sleep of patients attending for sleep studies. We aimed to compare patients‘ quality and quantity of sleep via a 1-day actigraphy monitoring during ward-based sleep study, with a 7-day home actigraphy monitoring.
Sleep quality and quantity metrics were retrospectively collected from the electronical medical records of patients who attended ward-based based cardio-respiratory polygraphy with actigraphy monitoring compared with home actigraphy one week following the sleep study. Statistical analysis was carried out with SPSS via Wilcoxon signed ranks and paired t-test.
11 patients’ data were collected (6 M, 5 F). Table 1 shows basic patient demographics, with an average age of 11.73 and an average obese BMI. Sleep efficiency (p=0.008) and estimated number of awakenings (p=0.015) were significantly worse in a ward-based setting; however, sleep latency did not differ (p=0.062). We also found a significant difference in estimated total sleep time (TST) between hospital and home sleep, but no significant difference in total time in bed (Tib) (p=0.43).
Our data demonstrate that children’s sleep is impaired within ward-based settings. The estimated sleep opportunity (TiB) given for patients is roughly equivalent to that given at home, however significant reductions are noted in sleep quality parameters including sleep efficiency, no. of awakenings and TST in a ward-based setting. Having acknowledged the limitations of comparing 1-day and 7-day measurements, the reduced sleep quality on the ward is likely due to the unfamiliar setting and other environmental factors such as light and noise.
