Sleep physiology and the perioperative care of patients with sleep disorders

Abstract

### Key points Sleep is a normal physiological process that is of great importance to us all. We know when we have not had enough of it and are aware of the effects that this can have on not only our work and productivity, but also on our social lives and emotional well-being. In addition to sleep deprivation-related personal accidents, it is well established that there is also an adverse effect on complex, ‘executive’ decision-making abilities, something that should concern us in our professional roles. Sleep has fascinated man throughout the ages. It is not difficult to see why early thinkers considered sleep to be a dormant process, somewhere between wakeful, sentient life, and the permanent state that is death. In Greek mythology Hypnos is the personification of sleep, his twin is Thanatos (death) (Fig. 1). Fig 1 ‘Sleep and his half-brother death’. J.W. Waterhouse, 1874. Image courtesy of Sotheby's, Inc. © 2003. However, this long-held idea of dormancy conflicts with man's equally long-held fascination with the process of dreams and the idea (or ‘science’) of dream interpretation. A link with spirituality was …