Sleep quality and risk of oropharyngeal dysphagia in older people in intensive care units.
Isabela Cristina Monteiro de Lira, Natália de Castro E Silva Martins, Luciano Pedrosa de Oliveira Filho and 2 others
No significant link was found between poor sleep and dysphagia risk in older ICU patients.
Poor sleep was, however, associated with greater daytime sleepiness. Choking was the most common swallowing complaint reported.
Key findings
1No significant association was found between sleep quality and risk of oropharyngeal dysphagia (p = 1.000).
2Patients with poor sleep reported greater daytime sleepiness (median 5.0 versus 7.0 on a 1-to-10 scale, p = 0.039).
337.9% of participants had poor sleep quality and 16.7% scored at risk of dysphagia on the RADI-H screen.
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What it does not show
All data came from self-reported questionnaires, so the findings reflect the patients' own perception rather than objective measures of sleep or swallowing function. The exclusion criteria (sedation, intubation, non-oral feeding, cognitive impairment) likely removed the sickest ICU patients, the very group most at risk of both poor sleep and dysphagia. No sample-size calculation was performed, so the study may have been underpowered to detect a real association. Single-centre, cross-sectional design: one hospital, one three-month window, no follow-up, so no causal direction can be inferred.
Declared interests
Funded in part by CAPES, the Brazilian federal agency for postgraduate education (Finance Code 001). No industry sponsor, no device or drug manufacturer involvement is declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use a patient's sleep quality as a substitute for a swallowing screen. The study found no association between the two (p = 1.000), and 63.6% of patients at risk of dysphagia reported good sleep. Screen for dysphagia independently of how well the patient slept.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →