Wv. Mccall et al., SUBJECTIVE ESTIMATES OF SLEEP DIFFER FROM POLYSOMNOGRAPHIC MEASUREMENTS IN OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP-APNEA PATIENTS, Sleep, 18(8), 1995, pp. 646-650
It is well established that, as a group, insomnia patients overestimat
e sleep onset latency (SOL) and underestimate total sleep time (TST) w
hen compared to objective polysomnographic (PSG) findings. Whether a s
imilar phenomenon occurs with other sleep disorders is not fully estab
lished. We compared the PSC sleep of 84 patients with suspected sleep
apnea (SA) to their subjective experience of sleep reported on a sleep
diary the morning after PSG testing. Both patients with SA (SA+) and
those without (SA-) tended to overestimate SOL, but the SA+ group (n =
50) made larger overestimations (p < 0.02). The SA+ and SA- groups al
so differed in their accuracy at estimating TST, with SA+ patients und
erestimating TST (p < 0.05). These findings support the premise that m
arked discrepancies between subjective and PSG-determined sleep may no
t be limited to insomnia, but present in other sleep disorders as well
, and should be appreciated by practitioners when obtaining sleep hist
ories.