Exploration of sleep disorders in the elderly: which particularities?

There are many reasons to take into consideration the sleep disorders in the elderly. The sleep quality degrades with age and is strongly affected by medical conditions, intrinsic sleep disorders, or by a combination of these factors. Other age-related conditions such as severe dementia, dependence or living in institution worsen sleep disturbances in older people. When living alone elderly people, being cognitively impaired and medically disabled, may not be able to complain about sleep problems. Sleep disorders are thus underdiagnosed, unmarked, and insufficiently investigated in the elderly. In this heterogeneous population, sleep assessment should include a global geriatric approach and be individually adapted for each subject. The sleep interview must specially include medical comorbidities, medication uses, and aged-related changes of lifestyle such as retirement, loss of spouse, hospitalization or institutionalization. In the elderly with loss of autonomy, standard sleep assessment is not always adequate and must be replaced by shorter, simpler or observation-based tests such as the Sleep disorders inventory, Observation-based nocturnal sleep inventory, Observation and interview based diurnal sleepiness inventory. When sleep log is impossible, actimetry is an excellent alternative for studying sleep-wake rhythm. Ventilatory polygraphy is a simpler test for detecting sleep apnea than polysomnography. Utilization of sophisticated investigations should be discussed when the feasibility and usefulness is limited.