Sleep quality according to the pittsburgh sleep quality index in a sample of patients receiving palliative care

Sleep disturbances may occur in between 30-96% of cancer patients. Having a quality sleep is essential to achieve a good control of symptoms, since dysomnias are related to other clinical problems. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of sleep disorders and valuing the usefulness of the PSQI (Pittsburg Sleep quality Index) as a study tool of the quality sleep in our palliative care program. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted using as a patient sample from our home care program in the CUDECA Foundation in Malaga. We included all those patients in our home care program for a period of 4 months, excluding those patients under the age of eighteen, patients who were unable to communicate effectively, or patients who had been assessed as not being legally competent. The main demographic and clinical variables together with the PSQI variables were also taken into consideration. Results: The prevalence of sleep disturbances found in our study was 77.5% in a sample of 80 patients. We can highlight that the sleep latency was over 30 minutes in 47.6% of the cases, and the use of medication for insomnia was more than 3 times a week in 60% of patients. In comparison to the final result, the subjective sleep quality was "good or very good" in 62.6%. All the Pearson's correlations between the final result and the different components of the PSQI were positive, increasing when the cutoff score was changed as some research has suggested. Conclusions: The frequency of the insomnia in our sample confirms the findings in other studies; although we found some discordance in the analysis of the results. This suggests that there may be some limitations in the use of the PSQI as a valid tool in Palliative Care. (C) 2011 Sociedad Espanola de Cuidados Paliativos. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.