AMBULATORY CASSETTE POLYSOMNOGRAPHY - FINDINGS FROM A LARGE COHORT OFDRUG-FREE INSOMNIA PATIENTS

Technology for conducting ambulatory polysomnography (APSG) has been a vailable for more than a decade, but relatively few studies have used this technology to study the sleep of subjects in their usual home sle eping environments. Herein we suggest the usefulness of this technolog y for the study of normal sleepers and insomniacs, and we report our A PSG findings with a large cohort (n = 117) of drug-free insomnia outpa tients. All patients completed a sleep-history questionnaire, a clinic al interview with a sleep-disorders clinician, and one night of APSG i n their homes. Most sleep parameters derived were consistent with prev iously reported laboratory PSG findings for insomniacs, except that va lues of rapid-eye-movement sleep latencies were generally shorter than typically found in laboratory studies. Moreover, results showed that APSG served to differentiate major age groups and diagnostic subtypes within our larger sample, and patient tolerance for APSG was within ac ceptable limits. We conclude that APSG is a useful technique for evalu ating insomnia complaints.