30.06.2013 Views

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

These results have also been supported <strong>in</strong> studies us<strong>in</strong>g objective measures of sleep<br />

quality. In a recent case-control study (O'Donoghue, Fox, Heneghan, & Hurley, 2009)<br />

15 participants with chronic low back pa<strong>in</strong> <strong>and</strong> 15 age <strong>and</strong> gender matched controls<br />

were asked to complete the PSQI <strong>and</strong> a measure of health related quality of life (Short<br />

Form Medical Outcomes Survey SF-36). In addition, participants completed a daily<br />

sleep diary <strong>and</strong> wore an actigraph for three consecutive nights. F<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs revealed that<br />

participants with chronic back pa<strong>in</strong> had significantly lower sleep efficiency, but that<br />

there was no difference <strong>in</strong> the total sleep time or sleep onset latency between the two<br />

groups based on both the subjective <strong>and</strong> objective measures of sleep quality. However,<br />

the sample size <strong>in</strong> this study was too small to ensure statistical power to detect a<br />

significant difference between the two groups. Us<strong>in</strong>g polysomnographic record<strong>in</strong>gs,<br />

Wittig et al (1982) revealed that patients with a range of chronic pa<strong>in</strong> conditions spent<br />

less time asleep, displayed lower sleep efficiency <strong>and</strong> longer sleep onset latencies, <strong>in</strong><br />

comparison to a group of patients report<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>somnia, once aga<strong>in</strong> highlight<strong>in</strong>g the<br />

severity of the sleep disturbance <strong>in</strong> patients with chronic pa<strong>in</strong> (Wittig et al., 1982).<br />

As illustrated by the studies described above, the ma<strong>in</strong> issues for patients with chronic<br />

pa<strong>in</strong> are difficulties fall<strong>in</strong>g asleep, a short time spent asleep <strong>and</strong> sleep efficiency,<br />

although the type of sleep difficulties experienced does vary between studies (Abad,<br />

Sar<strong>in</strong>as, & Guillem<strong>in</strong>ault, 2008). These differences could suggest that sleep quality may<br />

be condition specific <strong>and</strong> future studies could explore sleep quality <strong>in</strong> specific disease<br />

groups, rather than <strong>in</strong> samples of a variety of chronic pa<strong>in</strong> conditions. The differences<br />

may also reflect the different assessment methods <strong>and</strong> study designs used, mak<strong>in</strong>g direct<br />

comparisons between the study f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs difficult. The cross-sectional designs of the<br />

studies described also prevent any notion of causality to be determ<strong>in</strong>ed.<br />

Two longitud<strong>in</strong>al studies explor<strong>in</strong>g pa<strong>in</strong> <strong>and</strong> sleep, one which followed patients with<br />

rheumatoid arthritis at basel<strong>in</strong>e <strong>and</strong> two years later (N = 242) (Nicassio & Wallston,<br />

1992), <strong>and</strong> the other which focused on orofacial pa<strong>in</strong> patients <strong>and</strong> followed them up<br />

over eight months (N = 128) (Riley et al., 2001), revealed that sleep quality assessed at<br />

basel<strong>in</strong>e, was not <strong>in</strong>dependently associated with levels of pa<strong>in</strong> at follow up, suggest<strong>in</strong>g<br />

that sleep may not be predictive of pa<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> the longer term. However, both studies<br />

highlighted that basel<strong>in</strong>e levels of pa<strong>in</strong> severity were <strong>in</strong>dependently predictive of sleep<br />

quality at follow up. These f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs suggest that pa<strong>in</strong> may have an important <strong>in</strong>fluence<br />

on long term sleep quality, <strong>and</strong> is supported by the 90% of people stat<strong>in</strong>g that the start<br />

30

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!