Study Objectives: Perception of sleep-wake times may differ from objective measures, although the mechanisms remain elusive. Quantifying the misperception phenotype involves two operational challenges: defining objective sleep latency and treating sleep latency and total sleep time as independent factors. We evaluated a novel approach to address these challenges and test the hypothesis that sleep fragmentation underlies misperception. Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis on patients with or without obstructive sleep apnea during overnight diagnostic polysomnography in our laboratory (n = 391; n = 252). We compared subjective and objective sleep-wake durations to characterize misperception. We introduce a new metric, sleep during subjective latency (SDSL), which captures latency misperception without defining objective sleep latency and allows correction for latency misperception when assessing total sleep time (TST) misperception. Results:The stage content of SDSL is related to latency misperception, but in the opposite manner as our hypothesis: those with > 20 minutes of SDSL had less N1%, more N3%, and lower transition frequency. After adjusting for misperceived sleep during subjective sleep latency, TST misperception was greater in those with longer bouts of REM and N2 stages (OSA patients) as well as N3 (non-OSA patients), which also did not support our hypothesis. Conclusions: Despite the advantages of SDSL as a phenotyping tool to overcome operational issues with quantifying misperception, our results argue against the hypothesis that light or fragmented sleep underlies misperception. Further investigation of sleep physiology utilizing alternative methods than that captured by conventional stages may yield additional mechanistic insights into misperception. I NTRO DUCTI O NAssessment of sleep often includes subjective reports of sleepwake durations, in clinical practice as well as epidemiological studies of sleep duration.1 However, when concurrent objective sleep measurements are available, it is not uncommon to observe that the subjective responses may differ. Underestimation of total sleep time has been previously observed in healthy adults under experimental circumstances, as well as insomnia patients during polysomnography (PSG).2-4 This phenomenon, sometimes termed misperception, may manifest as either overestimating sleep latency (SL) or underestimating total sleep time (TST), or both.4 Some patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may also exhibit misperception, though perhaps not to the same extent as those with insomnia symptoms. 5-7Several hypotheses have arisen regarding the basis for misperception, although a unified explanation remains elusive. For example, misperception has been linked with anxiety and mood, 3,8 personality traits, and sleep physiology measures such as electroencephalogram patterns of alpha-delta sleep or cyclic alternating pattern and high frequency electroencephalography (EEG) content. [9][10][11][12][13] In addition, we previously investigated possible relat...

Study design: Retrospective comparative study. Objective: Whereas smoking has been shown to affect the fusion rates for patients undergoing an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF), the relationship between smoking and health-related quality of life outcome measurements after an ACDF is less clear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether smoking negatively affects patient outcomes after an ACDF for cervical degenerative pathology.Methods: Patients with tumor, trauma, infection, and previous cervical spine surgery and those with less than a year of follow-up were excluded. Smoking status was assessed by self-reported smoking history. Patient outcomes, including Neck Disability Index, Short Form 12 Mental Component Score, Short Form 12 Physical Component Score (PCS-12), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) arm pain, VAS neck pain, and pseudarthrosis rates were evaluated. Outcomes were compared between smoking groups using multiple linear and logistic regression, controlling for age, sex, and body mass index (BMI), among other factors. A P value <.05 was considered significant.Results: A total of 264 patients were included, with a mean follow-up of 19.8 months, age of 53.1 years, and BMI of 29.6 kg/m2. There were 43 current, 69 former, and 152 nonsmokers in the cohort. At baseline, nonsmokers had higher PCS-12 scores than current smokers (P ¼ .010), lower VAS neck pain than current (P ¼ .035) and former (P ¼ .014) smokers, as well as lower VAS arm pain than former smokers (P ¼ .006). Postoperatively, nonsmokers had higher PCS-12 scores than both current (P ¼ .030) and former smokers (P ¼ .035). Smoking status was not a significant predictor of change in patient outcome in multivariate analysis.Conclusions: Whereas nonsmokers had higher function and lower pain than former or current smokers preoperatively, smoking status overall was not found to be an independent predictor of outcome scores after ACDF. This supports the notion that smoking status alone should not deter patients from undergoing ACDF for cervical degenerative pathology.

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