Sleep disturbance: The overlooked side after open heart surgery in adults

Abstract

Background Sleep is essential for full mental and physical renewal. Cardiac surgery improves the life expectancy and quality. But unfortunately, some patients lacked that merit as they suffered sleep disturbance. We used validated questionnaire applied to 153 cardiac surgery patients to assess the sleep disturbances after surgery. Results About 70 (45.8%) had valve procedure, 55 (36%) had revascularization, 19 (12.4%) had both procedures and 9 (5.8%) had other procedures. The majority had no post-operative bleeding nor infection. About 78% had sleeping difficulty for one month. About 50% used different medications to fall asleep, mostly analgesics. About 76% slept after 2–6 h irrespective of sleep quality. Some patients had poor sleep quality in the form of nightmares and night terrors. Conclusion Sleep quality was disturbed immediately following cardiac surgery. There was a reduction of night sleep compensated by increased daytime sleepiness. These changes almost reverted one month after surgery.

Sleep Pattern Changes in Patients Who Are Scheduled for Cardiac Surgery

“…Anxiety, depression, and increased weariness behavior with a tendency towards immobility following surgery were all linked to poor sleep quality after cardiac surgery. Fortunately, within one month, these alterations had returned to their preoperative levels, although they can take 6 to 12 months after surgery [ 14 ]. Although there is a lack of data on preoperative sleep assessment in cardiac surgery.…”

Effectiveness of non‐pharmacological interventions in improving sleep quality after cardiac surgery: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Subgroup analysis according to intervention duration showed no significant subgroup differences for sleep quality. This was an unexpected finding given that maximum sleep disturbance was found in the first post-operative week and most patients achieved default sleep pattern only after the third post-operative week (Bakry et al, 2022). For subgroup analysis on geographical location, subgroup differences may not be detected because of uneven covariate distribution where a far smaller number of trials contributed to the countries outside Asia subgroup (Richardson et al, 2019).…”

“…Patients aged more than 65 had poorer sleep quality than middle-aged patients after cardiac surgery (Redeker, 2008) and this could be due to age-associated sleep changes (Sterniczuk et al, 2014). Bakry et al (2022) highlighted that pain was the most prevalent contributory factor in sleep disturbance after cardiac surgery. Muthukrishnan et al (2020) found that fear of pain in the incision site and fear of changing sleep posture were associated with poor sleep quality.…”

“…Sleep was disturbed immediately after cardiac surgery and about 50% of heart surgery patients suffer from sleep disturbances during hospitalisation that persist for 6 months later (Bakry et al., 2022). There are multiple factors that affected sleep quality in patients after cardiac surgery.…”

“…Bakry et al. (2022) highlighted that pain was the most prevalent contributory factor in sleep disturbance after cardiac surgery. Muthukrishnan et al.…”