Pre-Admission Sleep Characteristics of Patients Admitted to the Medical Intensive Care Unit: A Retrospective...

The medical intensive care unit (ICU) can be a challenging place for patients to get adequate sleep. Poor sleep quality before ICU admission could have significant consequences for sleep during ICU admission and for critical illness recovery. The objective of this study was to characterize the pre-admission sleep of patients admitted to the medical ICU using sleep questionnaires obtained during a larger randomized control trial.

Enrolled participants were interviewed regarding their habitual sleep routines prior to their ICU admission via the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Demographic and medical information were also collected.

We enrolled 40 medically critically ill participants who reported a mean sleep duration (± standard deviation, SD) of 6.9 ± 1.8 hours and a mean sleep latency of 34.2 ± 36.5 minutes. The mean global PSQI score was 7.7 ± 4.0 with 61% of patients having a global PSQI score >5. The mean ESS score was 9.5 ± 5.1 with 36% of patients reporting an abnormal score >10.

Patients admitted to the ICU appear to have poor quality habitual sleep prior to hospitalization. The PSQI and ESS tools may provide insight into pre-ICU sleep in selected patient populations. These tools could be leveraged to expand the evidence base regarding pre-hospital sleep in critically ill patients and potentially inform interventions to improve sleep in the ICU.