Background Sleep health is an overlooked but important part of children’s health and development. The health consequences associated with poor sleep health may impact recovery during critical illness. Objective Explore sleep health among children in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) receiving usual care or a nurse-led chronotherapeutic care bundle. Methods Secondary analysis of the RESTORE Resilience (R2) trial. Parent-reported baseline sleep health was compared with PICU sleep health, including compliance with baseline sleep behaviors, alertness levels, and actigraphy-based measures of sleep timing, efficiency, and duration. Results In 52 R2 participants (6 months to 17 years), 49 provided prehospital sleep data and 22/49 (45%) had atypical baseline sleep health. Participants had irregular PICU sleep behaviors and spent ≥ 25% of PICU days sedated. Children experienced little daytime activity consolidation and short, fragmented sleep episodes. Total sleep time was within 1 hour of baseline on 23 (11%) study days. There were few associations between baseline and PICU sleep health or between R2 bundle implementation and PICU sleep health. Conclusions Critically ill children demonstrated disrupted sleep health. Results will inform nurse-led interventions to promote sleep in the PICU.
Kalvas et al. (Fri,) studied this question.