Using a Non-Wearable Actigraphy in Nursing Care for Dementia With Lewy Bodies

Abstract

People who have dementia with Lewy bodies often have sleep disorders. We used non-wearable devices to record and categorize the sleep patterns of patients with Lewy body dementia. Individual sleep data at a dementia–care unit in Japan were recorded using non-wearables. One week’s worth of data from 18 patients was analyzed. Median metrics for all participants were the following: sleep efficiency, 68% (23-89); sleep duration at night, 6.8 hours (1.6-11.1); times getting out of bed at night, 3.5 (0-13). We identified three types of abnormal sleep: extremely short sleep duration, excessive sleep duration at night, and excessive number of times getting out of bed at night. Sleep disturbances in Lewy body dementia patients are treated using various practices; staff must choose the most effective plan for each patient’s situation. Monitoring patient sleep using non-wearable provides more objective data that can help staff better personalize nursing care.