An Investigation Of The Sleep Status Of Certain Military Personnel And The Comparative Analysis Of The Consistency Between Common Tools Used For Assessing Sleep Quality

Sleep is one of the most essential and fundamental physiological activities,and sleep quality is an important indicator of health.A restful sleep not only helps to recover from fatigue,but also positively contribute to mental health.Due to the unique work responsibilities,work intensity,working environment and other factors,people with special occupations tend to have their sleep affected more greatly and increasing attention should be paid to it.As everyone is concerned about their own sleep,it is necessary for this population to use appropriate tools for daily sleep monitoring.Polysomnography,usually abbreviated to “PSG”,is the most accurate device in monitoring sleep in sleep medicine,but it is not practical to use at home due to a number of limitations it has.These include the need to perform in sleep labs wih well-trained personnel,its low comfort and relatively high cost.A number of emerging commercial sleep monitoring devices are gradually accepted by the public because they are easier to use,more economical and more comfortable,which could be considered as an alternative to traditional PSG.However,whether they could achieve effective sleep monitoring without disturbance remains to be explored.Few studies have researched the effectiveness of commercial sleep monitoring devices targeting special occupational groups.As a result of it,this study attempts to explore the applicability of the commercial sleep monitoring devices of different types to the special occupational population.In order to explore the value of applying commercial sleep monitoring devices in special occupational populations,a subjective questionnaire was used to investigate the sleep status of a certain military population.The result of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index of 88 military personnel showed that 15% of them had sleep problems,with difficulty falling asleep as the most prominent problem.According to the variety of the form,5 commercial sleep monitoring devices were selected to monitor the daily sleep of this population and then were compared with their applicability and performance metrics.Furthermore,the accuracy of the 5 devices was compared through a consistency test with PSG.5 commercial sleep monitoring devices were used to monitor the daily sleep of military personnel.The objective results derived from devices demonstrated that significant differences exist among 5 devices in all metrics.In terms of sleep-wake summary results,the main findings were the significance between the watch and the other four devices.The watch got a significantly longer total sleep time than the other four devices,a significantly shorter wake-after-sleep-onset time than the other four devices,and a significantly shorter sleep latency than three of them.The results of sleep stage summary measures showed that the differences mainly lie in the ring with the other3 devices.The light sleep time derived from the ring was significantly longer than the sleep belt.The deep sleep time detected by the ring was significantly shorter than the watch.The rapid eye movement sleep time results from the ring was significantly shorter than the sleep belt and the square box.The subjective assessment results indicated that disturbance(or comfort)was an important but not the only factor considered when users choose a device.Square box had the least disturbance but the most popular device was the watch.PSG and the 5 commercial sleep monitoring devices were used to monitor 16soldiers’ sleep.The findings showed that the bias between PSG and devices varies in different sleep parameters.According to the consistency test,the sleep belt is the best device in that it is moderately consistent with PSG in 3 sleep parameters including total sleep time,wake after sleep onset time,and rapid eye movement sleep time.But practically speaking,it still cannot meet the need of daily sleep monitoring.