Complaints about a bad quality of sleep could be used as a screening method in the exploration of patients' quality of life (QoL).

This study was based on a SUlvey of a representative sample of 1000 Austrians who were questioned about their sleep and dream behavior. About two-thirds of the respondents reported that they generally recalled at least one dream per month. Dream recall frequency decreased with advancing age, but did not differ between men and women. Fifty-five percent of the respondents characterized the affective content of their dreams: 29% reported neutral, 20% positive, and 6% negative dreams. Four percent of the sample reported suffering from nightmares. These respondents more frequently reported snoring, interrupted sleep, daytime somnolence, anxiety and nervousness, depression, high dream recall, recurrent dreams, and dreaming in color. Twenty-six percent of the total sample reported that sometimes they realized during their dreams that they were dreaming. These respondents more frequently reported family problems, high dream recall, positive dream content, recurrent dreams, dreaming in color, and nightmares.

Quality-of-life (QoL) issues have become increasingly important in health care practice and research. Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) results in an especially serious reduction in QoL. The purpose of this study was to measure the QoL (life satisfaction) of OSAS patients treated with nasal continuous positive airway pressure (nCPAP). We aimed to determine whether and to what extent the QoL of OSAS patients using nCPAP differs from that of randomly selected subjects without this disorder. The QoL of 67 patients treated for at least 3 months with nCPAP, 21 OSAS patients at the time of OSAS diagnosis, and 113 randomly selected persons visiting the hospital (controls) was investigated with the help of the Munich life-quality dimension list (MLDL), an instrument for cognitive assessment of elementary components (physical condition, psyche, social life, everyday life) of QoL. It was found that QoL of OSAS patients treated with nCPAP did not significantly differ from that of control subjects with regard to elementary components. The 21 untreated OSAS patients showed significantly lower scores in all four subcategories: physical condition (p<0.0005), psyche (p<0.01), social life (p<0.0005) and everyday life (p<0.007). Thus, it may be concluded that nasal continuous positive airway pressure therapy has an important impact on the quality of life of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome patients, and signifies a further advantage in addition to clinical aspects. Treated patients are as satisfied or dissatisfied with their life as persons without this illness.

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