SLEEP HABITS AND SLEEP DISTURBANCES AMONG THE ELDERLY - AN EPIDEMIOLOGIC SURVEY

Objectives. To analyse simultaneously sleep habits and sleep disturban ces in an elderly population and numerous factors possibly affecting s leep at the same time. Design. A cross-sectional epidemiological surve y by means of questionnaires. Setting. The capital city of Iceland, Re ykjavik and surrounding suburbs. Participants. A randomly selected, bu t stratified sample with 100 men and 100 women in each 5-year age grou p of the ages 65-84 years-800 individuals altogether. Main outcome mea sure. Sleep habits and sleep disturbances. Results. The mean duration of sleep was 7.25 h (SD 74 min). Mean sleep onset time was 00. 1 3 hou rs and was not related to age and gender but was delayed at weekends. Daytime napping was reported by 50% of the men and 31% of the women (P < 0.001). Difficulty maintaining sleep (DMS) was the most commonly re ported insomnia complaint (men 37% and women 30%). Sleep charts reveal ed that men woke up an average of 1.2 times per night but women 0.8 ti mes per night (P < 0.01). Difficulty initiating sleep was reported by 9.6% and early morning awakening (EMA) by 16.7%. Pain was a strong fac tor contributing to EMA. There was also an increase in EMA complaints among the elderly with obstructive pulmonary diseases and systemic hyp er-tension. The prevelance of insomnia was only partly related to age and gender. Multiple regression analyses, however, showed different in terrelationships between insomnia and other symptoms and findings for men versus women. Conclusion. DMS is the most commonly reported insomn ia complaint among the elderly (men 37% and women 30%). The prevalence of insomnia did not increase with age in our study group.