Assessment of Sleep Quality of Hospitalized Patients Treated With EEG-guided Protection Procedures: Application in Intensive Care Unit

Overview

Sleep of critically ill patients is highly disturbed with a high sleep fragmentation; patients spend most of their sleep in very short sleep episodes, lasting less than 10 minutes. Causes of theses sleep alterations are complex including environmental noise (alarms, beepers, conversations…), continuous light, nurse care and repetitive measures of vital parameters. Numerous studies have reported a relationship between severe sleep alterations and a prolonged weaning period and mortality. Improving sleep quality in critically ill patients is a major challenge to promote ICU patient's recovery. A very promising treatment is the application of a nocturnal " quiet-time " during which non urgent care, comfort care, systematic measures of vital parameters are delayed and clustered in order to limit room entries. However, " quiet time " procedures have failed to improve sleep quality to date. A miniaturized medical device recording one EEG channel and embedding an automated sleep scoring algorithm running in real-time was devised. This device (positioned on forehead, and continuously recording noise and light levels) indicates if the patient is awake or asleep using a tablet positioned at doorstep of the room, so that nurses know if patient is sleeping, without entering the room. Hypothesis proposes that applying sleep protection procedures (clustering cares, limiting room entries, reducing lights and noise, delaying non urgent care…) when patients are sleeping (= EEG-guided strategies) will increase patients sleep quality. This study will assess the effect of such device on sleep quality in ICU patients. This is a "before / after" design. The first group ("control group"), will be recorded but the sleep scoring will not be displayed by the tablet and patient will be expose to standard care. Then, procedure will be established collegially with nurses, nurses assistants and doctors. Then, the second group ("treated group") will be recorded with the device displaying the status of the patient (asleep/awake) and all caregivers will be asked to follow the established rules ("EEG-guided sleep protection rules")