Background: Poor sleep contributes to the developmental problems seen in preterm infants. We evaluated sleep\nproblems in preterm infants 6 months of post-gestational age using the subjective Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire\n(BISQ) and objective sleep tests. We also compared the sleep of premature infants with that of full-term infants.\nMethods: The study included 68 6-month-old full-term healthy infants and 191 premature infants born at <37 weeks\ngestation. All parents completed the BISQ-Chinese version and sleep diaries. At the same time, all premature infants\nwere submitted to one night of polysomnography (PSG) in the sleep laboratory and also were set up with an actigraph\nkept for 7 days. Statistical analyses were performed using correlation coefficients and the t-test with SPSS version 18 to\ncompare questionnaire responses with other subjective and objective measures of sleep.\nResults: The sleep problems indicated in the subjective questionnaire for the premature infants, particularly:\nââ?¬Å?the nocturnal sleep duration, number of night awakenings, daytime sleep duration, duration of time with\nmouth breathing, and loud-noisy breathingââ?¬Â had significant correlations with sleep diaries, actigraphy and PSG\nresults. The BISQ showed that duration of infantââ?¬â?¢s sleeping on one side, nocturnal sleep duration, being held\nto fall asleep, number of nighttime awakenings, daytime sleep duration, subjective consideration of sleep\nproblems, loud-noisy breathing, and duration spent crying during the night were significantly different between the\npremature infants and the term infants. PSG confirmed the presence of a very high percentage (80.6%) of premature\ninfants with AHI > 1 event/hour as indicated by the questionnaire.\nConclusion: Premature infants have more sleep problems than full-term infants, including the known risk of abnormal\nbreathing during sleep, which has been well demonstrated already with the BISQ-Chinese (CBISQ).
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