Objective: The purpose of this study of 100 patients suffering from sleep-disorders was to determine correlations between their subjective health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and objective variables in sleep initiation and maintenance, sleep architecture, objective quality of awakening, psychophysiological parameters and subjective quality of sleep and awakening.
Methods: Objective measurements were obtained from overnight diagnostic polysomnography. Subjective HRQoL was determined from the Quality of Life Index (QLI, Mezzich and Cohen) completed prior to the adaptation night. Other measurements included subjective and objective quality of sleep and awakening (psychometry) the evening before and morning after polysomnographic investigations.
Results: 63% of the patients were suffering from nonorganic and 37% from organic sleep disorders (SDs). Within the first group, nonorganic insomnia predominated; within the second, sleep apnea. Subjective HRQoL correlated well with subjective sleep and awakening quality, especially in nonorganic SDs. There were only a few correlations of objective measurements with subjective HRQoL: in the total group of SD patients HRQoL correlated with sleep stage S2, and in nonorganic SDs with attention scores and psychophysiological measurements (mainly the pulse rate in the evening and morning).
Conclusion: Our findings suggest only a weak relationship between objective sleep variables and subjective HRQoL in both organic and nonorganic SDs. However, we found various significant correlations of HRQoL with subjective measurements of sleep, especially in nonorganic SDs.