View clinical trials related to Sleep Fragmentation.
Filter by:The role of sleep in patients admitted to the intensive care unit is an emerging field of research. There have been studies that show patients in the ICU have poor sleep including sleep fragmentation, multiple arousals, decreased stage 3 sleep and reduced REM sleep (1, 2, 3). Causes of poor sleep in the ICU include severity of illness, abnormal light exposure, and frequent arousals for medical care. Not only does poor sleep contribute to reduced cognitive function and delirium, but there are also implications for the immune system function and wound healing (4). Polysomnography is regarded as the gold standard for sleep studies, however it has limited utility in the ICU population (5) and alternative methods of sleep analysis need to be investigated to better understand the underlying physiologic mechanisms and subsequent cognitive effects.
This study seeks to examine the effects of overnight noise reduction in critically ill patients who are receiving mechanical ventilation. The investigators will randomly place subjects into one of three groups: 1) usual care 2) overnight earplugs 3) overnight earplugs and noise-canceling headphones. The investigators will monitor for safety, and will measure the amount of delirium experienced by subjects, record the amount of sedating and painkilling medicines required, and measure sleep quality during the study, among other information. The investigators will also measure noise levels experienced by patients in each group. The investigators predict that the use of overnight noise reduction will be safe and will reduce the amount of delirium by improving the quality of sleep in critically ill patients.