[Sleep patterns and sleep disturbances among schoolchildren in the town of Gandia].

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge of sleep patterns and sleep disturbances among healthy children is interesting, particularly, amongst other things, for carrying out comparative studies with children with certain diseases. The objective of the present study was to study sleep patterns and the prevalence of sleep disturbances among schoolchildren.

METHODS

We used the Spanish version of the Pediatric Sleep Questionnaire, which was given out to a representative sample of Gandia Town.

RESULTS

The prevalence of sleep disturbances were as follows: insomnia 10.5 %, daytime sleepiness 13 %, a positive score for sleep-disorder breathing 5.7 %, snoring 5.7 %, enuresis 5.3 %, sleepwalking 12.5 %, night terrors 18.4 %, nightmares 12.8 %. As regards sleep patterns, the average time for getting up was 7:45 am, the average time for going to bed was 22:13 pm, and the average sleep duration was 9 hours and 30 minutes.

CONCLUSIONS

Comparison among different populations studies is difficult due to the use of different instruments to measure the same variables. Our results are similar to other studies, with the exception of sleep-disorder breathing and snoring, where the prevalences are lower in our study. The sleep patterns also did not show any differences between other published studies.