Validation of the Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire in postoperative patients

Abstract

Along with pain, sleep disturbances cause the greatest discomfort in patients during the first few days after surgery. The incidence of insomnia in postoperative patients may reach 50%. Because of high costs and complexity of implementation the polysomnography remains inaccessible for a routine sleep assessment. Instead, scoring scales are cheap, and can be easily included into routine nursing care. The English version of RCSQ is characterized by high sensitivity, specificity, reliability and correlation with polysomnography in intensive care patients. The aim of the present study was a validation of the RCSQ in population of postoperative patients.