Abstract
Background: The factors associated with sleep disturbances in cancer patients remains unclear. This study aimed to explore the prevalence of sleep disorders and predictors associated with sleep disturbance in cancer patients from a radiotherapy department.Methods: Patients with cancers were recruited before the start of radiotherapy from our institution between January 2019 and February 2020. Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) scale was used to assess sleep quality. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to conduct statistical analysis.Results: A total of 330 eligible patients were included. Of them, 38.3% (n = 127) had the globe PSQI score >7, indicating that they suffered from sleep disorders. Patients with lung cancer (45.2%) were more likely to suffer from sleep disturbance, followed by cervical cancer (43.8%), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (41.7%), esophageal cancer (41.5%), breast cancer (37.7%), and colorectal cancer (30%). With regard to the PSQI components, the mean sleep duration was 8 h, 20.3% (n = 67) of them reported poor subjective sleep quality, 6.1% (n = 20) needed medication to improve sleep, and 53.6% (n = 177) suffered daytime dysfunction. Multivariate logistic regression models showed body mass index (BMI) ≥ 20 kg/m2 [odds ratio (OR) 0.599, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.329–0.948, P = 0.031] and the receipt of surgery (OR 0.507, 95% CI 0.258–0.996, P = 0.048) were the significant favorable predictors for sleep disturbance, while age, gender, marital status, education level, comorbidity, metastasis status, diagnostic status, and cancer type were not significantly associated with sleep disturbance.Conclusions: Approximately 40% of the cancer patients suffer from sleep disturbance before the start of radiotherapy. Patients with BMI ≥ 20 kg/m2 and receiving surgery are less likely to develop sleep disturbance in comparison with others.
Highlights
Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide
Previous studies showed that poor sleep quality and shorter sleep duration were significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality in the general population [10, 11]
Patients with body mass index (BMI) < 20 kg/m2 (P = 0.024) and non-surgery (P = 0.015) were more likely to suffer from sleep disturbance
Summary
Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide. Nowadays, the incidence of the tumor remains an increase over the past decades, and ∼4,300,000 new cases and 2,800,000 cancer deaths occurred in 2015 in China [1]. The overall incidence of sleep disturbance in cancer patients ranged from 30 to 93.1%, which was significantly higher than that in the general population (9–33%) [5,6,7,8,9]. Previous studies showed that poor sleep quality and shorter sleep duration were significantly associated with higher all-cause mortality in the general population [10, 11]. Persistent poor sleep quality negatively affected the health condition in patients with cancers, including decreased psychological and physical function, poor sleep efficiency, and sleep duration were closely related to poor overall survival and cancer-specific death after a follow-up period of 10 years [12, 13]. This study aimed to explore the prevalence of sleep disorders and predictors associated with sleep disturbance in cancer patients from a radiotherapy department
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