2021 Volume 54 Issue 11 Pages 561-570
To clarify the sleep characteristics of hemodialysis patients, we investigated the sleep of 41 hemodialysis patients using subjective and objective methods, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and actographic recordings. The global PSQI score showed disturbed sleep in all hemodialysis patients who were taking sleeping medications (SM＋) and 40％ of those who were not taking sleeping medications (SM－). The objective evaluation showed poor values for both sleep induction and sleep interruption, which resulted in short total sleep times. The number of awakenings of longer than 5 minutes (NA＞5) score of the SM－ patients was greater than that of the SM＋ patients. Among the former patients, complaints of daytime dysfunction and the NA＞5 score were correlated. We compared these findings with those obtained in previous studies of healthy people and found that the sleep of hemodialysis patients was poor in terms of both sleep induction and interruption. The subjective and objective evaluations revealed that the sleep of hemodialysis patients is severely disturbed. Sleeping medications are partially effective against sleep interruption, but are not sufficiently effective at promoting sleep induction. Some patients who are unaware of their sleep interruption, but experience daytime dysfunction, tend to be missed and go untreated.
