Prevalence of Depression and Sleep Disorders in Patients on Dialysis: A Cross-Sectional Study in Qatar

Patients with end-stage renal disease treated with dialysis have poor quality of life (QOL). Improving QOL in these patients with multiple comorbidities is a large challenge. We performed a cross-sectional study to evaluate the prevalence and associated factors of depression and sleep disorders in this population. Our primary aim was to evaluate QOL measures in dialysis patients in Qatar through a series of validated questionnaires mainly concerning depression and sleep disorders. Our secondary aim was to study the associations of age, sex, and comorbid conditions with the QOL measures. We hypothesized that end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on dialysis would have disturbed QOL due to both ESRD and dialysis and comorbidities. This prospective cross-sectional study included adult ESRD patients receiving either hemodialysis (HD) or peritoneal dialysis (PD) in the main tertiary dialysis unit in Qatar. We administered two surveys to evaluate depression (the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, http://www.bmedreport.com/archives/7139) and sleep disorders (the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, https://www.sleep.pitt.edu/instruments/). We also reviewed patient demographics, comorbidities, and laboratory test results to evaluate any associated factors. We randomly studied 253 patients (62% on HD and 38% on PD). Overall, 48% of patients had depression, while 83.8% had sleep disorders. The PD had more poor sleepers than the HD group (89.1% versus (vs.) 75%, p=0.003). Most of our dialysis patients had poor sleep, but it was more significant in the elderly group 109 (90%) than in the young group 103 (78%) (p=0.009). Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) had significantly more prevalence of poor sleep (131 (88.5%)) than those without DM (81 (77.1%), p=0.01). More female patients had depression than male patients (52% vs. 25%, p < 0.0001; odds ratio: 3.27 (95% confidence interval: 1.9-5.6), p < 0.0001). This is the first study in Qatar to evaluate depression and sleep disorders in patients on dialysis therapy.