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Assessment of sleep and sleep disorders in geriatric patients

Assessment von Schlaf und Schlafstörungen bei geriatrischen Patienten

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Abstract

Sufficient and refreshing sleep is important for good health, physical and cognitive functioning as well as quality of life. An assessment of sleep quality and sleep disorders is therefore mandatory in geriatric patients. Despite a variety of clinical assessment tools for screening and diagnosing sleep disorders, only some of them have been validated in older subjects and nearly none in geriatric patients or in individuals with dementia. Therefore, the aim of this review is to present a concise overview of assessment tools for sleep disorders that are widely used in sleep medicine and to briefly discuss the suitability and limitations in geriatric patients and subjects with dementia.

Zusammenfassung

Ausreichender und erholsamer Schlaf ist wichtig für Gesundheit, körperliche und kognitive Funktionalität und Lebensqualität. Eine Einschätzung der Schlafqualität und von gestörtem Schlaf ist daher bei geriatrischen Patienten obligatorisch. Trotz einer Vielzahl von klinischen Bewertungsinstrumenten für das Screening und die Diagnostik von Schlafstörungen wurden nur wenige dieser Instrumente bei älteren Probanden und fast keine bei geriatrischen Patienten oder Personen mit Demenz validiert. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es daher, einen prägnanten Überblick über die in der Schlafmedizin weit verbreiteten Bewertungsinstrumente für Schlafstörungen zu geben und deren Eignung bzw. Grenzen bei geriatrischen Patienten und Demenzpatienten kurz zu diskutieren.

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Correspondence to Helmut Frohnhofen.

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H. Frohnhofen, R. Popp, S. Stieglitz, N. Netzer and H. Danker-Hopfe declare that they have no competing interests.

For this article no studies with human participants or animals were performed by any of the authors. All procedures reported in this article were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Frohnhofen, H., Popp, R., Stieglitz, S. et al. Assessment of sleep and sleep disorders in geriatric patients. Z Gerontol Geriat 53, 100–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00391-019-01670-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00391-019-01670-9

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