What Are Some of the Other Medical Conditions That Can Affect Sleep?

Children with acute and chronic medical conditions frequently experience significant difficulties with sleep. Hospitalizations, pain, stress of illness, medication, and disease processes can affect the quantity and quality of sleep that, in turn, can have a profound effect on the child’s overall health and quality of life and also on caregiver well being. During hospitalizations, sleep can be impacted by pain, hallway noise, light, blood pressure and temperature checks, and overall unease from being in an unfamiliar environment. In addition, pain and sleep have a bidirectional relationship in that pain can disrupt sleep cycles, and sleep deficits are associated with increased perceptions of pain. Furthermore, medications and disease processes can impact both the quality and quantity of sleep and, while examples of these conditions range from the mild to the complex, respiratory symptoms often predominate in their contribution to sleep disruption (Table 40-1).