The Relationship Between Sleep Quality and General Health in Patients With Heart Failure

Introduction: Sleeping is one of the most important human innate needs, and its disruption due to a variety of illnesses, can cause anxiety, distress, and adverse mental health conditions in the individual.  Objective: This study aimed to examine the relationship of sleep quality with general health in patients with heart failure. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytical study conducted on 150 patients with heart failure hospitalized in the cardiology department of one of the hospitals in Sari City, Iran in 2014. The data collection tools were the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) inventory and General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28). For analyzing the collected data, the Independent t test, Pearson correlation and Chi-squared test were used. Results: About 26.2% of the patients had good quality of sleep, while 73.8% had poor quality. The patients’ mean score of general health was reported as 29.14±13.75. According to Chi-squared test results, except sleep duration and habitual sleep efficiency, other dimensions of sleep quality had significant relationship with general health. Based on the Independent t test results, age and marital status of the patients had a significant relationship with some dimensions of sleep quality (P<0.05). According to Pearson correlation test results, somatic symptoms and anxiety as two dimensions of general health, had significant association with ejection fraction of patients’ hearts (P=0.008, r=0.6). Also, there was significant relationship between depression and gender of the patients (P=0.003) based on the Independent t test. Conclusion: According to the results, sleep quality and general health in patients with heart failure are at low level and they are directly related to each other. Therefore, providing specific general health-care services can be useful for these patients and improve their sleep quality.