The sleep patterns of patients in the intensive care unit are so superficial that they barely spend any time in the restorative stages of sleep that aid in healing, UT Southwestern Medical Center physicians have found.
“Current clinical-care protocols routinely and severely deprive critically ill patients of sleep at a time when the need for adequate rest is perhaps most essential,” said Dr. Randall Friese, assistant professor of burn/trauma/critical care at UT Southwestern and lead author of a study appearing in today’s issue of The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection and Critical Care.
“We haven’t recognized the importance of prescribing sleep,” said Dr. Friese, whose study is one of the first to examine the sleep patterns of surgical and trauma patients. “Patients in the ICU may look like they are sleeping, but they’re not sleeping well. They are not getting the restorative stages that are required.”
Dr. Randall Friese helped investigate the sleep patterns of intensive-care-unit patients, discovering that those patients may look like they are sleeping, but they are not sleeping well.
Sleep typically occurs at night in successive cyclical stages. Sleep begins in very superficial stages. These stages are followed by deeper, more restorative states, including rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Although researchers continue to investigate exactly what happens in the brain during REM sleep, they do know that it is critical for restorative sleep.
