Assessment of sleep and sleep disorders in geriatric patients.

Sufficient and refreshing sleep is important for good health, physical and cognitive functioning as well as quality of life. An assessment of sleep quality and sleep disorders is therefore mandatory in geriatric patients. Despite a variety of clinical assessment tools for screening and diagnosing sleep disorders, only some of them have been validated in older subjects and nearly none in geriatric patients or in individuals with dementia. Therefore, the aim of this review is to present a concise overview of assessment tools for sleep disorders that are widely used in sleep medicine and to briefly discuss the suitability and limitations in geriatric patients and subjects with dementia.