Sleep patterns of patients with restless legs syndrome

Poster Presentation

Friday, July 13, 2007
9:30 AM - 10:15 AM

Friday, July 13, 2007
3:15 PM - 4:00 PM

This presentation is part of : Poster Presentation III

Ja Young Lee, MSN, RN, Nursing, Sunlin College, Pohang, South Korea, Myungae Kim, RN, PhD, College of Nursing, Keimyung University, Daegu, South Korea, and Eun Ju Lee, RN, PhD, Nursing, Andong Science College, Andong, South Korea.

Learning Objective #1: examine and compare sleep patterns of patients with restless legs syndrome with normal group by an actigraph.
Learning Objective #2: learn about Restless legs syndrome(RLS) as sensorimotor disorders.

For sleep assessment, this study examined and compared sleep patterns of patients with restless legs syndrome with normal group by an actigraph. The data collection was from March to April 2006. The subjects concerning this study were 10 patients having restless legs syndrome that had been diagnosed by a neurologist, and 10 subjects in the normal group. The data was collected by MTI Health Services industry software program for actigraph analysis and analyzed with Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman's rho with SPSS 12.0 program.
The results from this study were as follows:

There were significant differences between normal group and RLS group on sleep efficiency (U=215.00, p=.001) and number of awakenings (U=294.50, p=.033) that had been measured by an actigraph.There were significant differences between normal group and RLS group on sleep latency (U=198.50, p=.000), sleep efficiency (U=262.50, p=.009), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (U=8.00, p=.001) and Insomnia Severity Index (U=7.50, p=.001) that had been measured by subjective sleep parameters.
There were significant positive correlation on total sleep time (r=.643, p=.000) and the number of awakenings (r=.434, p=.001) between sleep parameters measured by an actigraph and sleep parameters measured by sleep diary.
In the above results, patients with restless leg syndrome have sleep problem about decreased sleep efficiency and increased number of awakenings. Therefore, the actigraph applied was a useful indicator for evaluating sleep. I suggest that an actigraph should be used as an objective measurement tool in assessing sleep patterns and evaluating effects of the treatment on subjects having sleep problems.