Thirty cancer out-patients, 28 out-patients with cardiac disease, and 24 controls matched for age, sex, race, religion, and marital status were administered a 38-item questionnaire on sleep habits. Patients with cardiac disease perceived that they had more difficulty falling asleep, awakened earlier than planned, and felt sleepy during the day more often than the other two groups. Patients with cancer differed from controls only in feeling that they had more difficulty staying asleep. The findings demonstrate that while patients with two different chronic diseases have altered sleep patterns, the patterns are disturbed in different ways. This has important implications for therapy as a different approach is needed for the patient who has difficulty falling asleep as compared with the patient who has difficulty staying asleep.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.