Barulho em hospitais e o sono de pacientes

Quem já não teve um dia péssimo decorrente de uma noite mal dormida?

Estamos falando de pessoas saudáveis. Quando passamos para nossos pacientes em ambiente hospitalar, as coisas se complicam ainda mais… Qual impacto será que isso não tem até na recuperação dos doentes?

Estudo publicado no Annals of Internal Medicine avaliou esses barulhos de hospital em pessoas saudáveis e observou, como esperado, impacto significativo na fisiologia do sono.

Artigo do Annals of Internal Medicine - Ann Intern Med. 2012;157:170-179. 

Hospital noise alters sleep physiology

August 7, 2012

ST LOUIS (via MD Consult) - Hospitalize noise, especially of the electronic kind, alters sleep physiology, finds a study appearing in the August 7, 2012, issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Investigators conducted a 3-day polysomnographic study among 12 healthy participants to assess the cortical (encephalographic) arousal responses during sleep to typical hospital noises by types, loudness, and sleep stage.

The study, conducted in a sound-attenuated sleep laboratory, had a baseline (sham) night followed by 2 intervention nights during which the investigators introduced 14 sounds common in hospitals (eg, voices, intravenous alarms, phones, ice machines, outside traffic, and helicopters). They assessed the impact of loudness, ranging from 40 to 70 dBA (decibels adjusted for the range of normal hearing), and the impact on specific sleep stages, including rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep stages 2 and 3.

Results showed that the noise resulted in encephalographic arousals according to type of noise, loudness, and sleep stage.

Electronic sounds were more likely than others to cause arousals. Also, the encephalographic response differed by type of noise.

Noises more often caused arousal in NREM stage 2 of sleep than in NREM stage 3. Type of noise had a greater impact on arousals during NREM sleep than during REM sleep.

The investigators acknowledge that the study was small and included only healthy participants.

"Sounds during sleep influence both cortical brain activity and cardiovascular function. This study systematically quantifies the disruptive capacity of a range of hospital sounds on sleep, providing evidence that is essential to improving the acoustic environments of new and existing health care facilities to enable the highest quality of care," they conclude.