Sleep Quality Assessment in the Intensive Care Units: Comparing Actigraphy and the Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire – A Pilot Study in the Moroccan Context

Introduction: Sleep in intensive care unit (ICU) patients is frequently disrupted, which may adversely affect their overall health and recovery. despite the implementation of various strategies to promote sleep, accurately assessing its quality remains complex. This pilot study aimed to evaluate both the quality and quantity of sleep in ICU patients using actigraphy (ACT) and the Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire (RCSQ), and to compare the diagnostic performance of these two tools. Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study including 228 ICU patients. Sleep was assessed using both the RCSQ and ACT. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to evaluate the discriminative ability of each tool (Area Under the Curve [AUC], sensitivity, specificity), with optimal cut-off points determined using Youden's Index. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare sleep parameters between patients classified as having good or poor sleep based on ACT measurements. Results: The mean RCSQ score was 38.16 ± 17.09, indicating poor perceived sleep quality. Sleep onset latency (based on RCSQ) was 35.71 ± 21.44 minutes, with a mean of 40.32 ± 20.03 awakenings. According to ACT, sleep latency was 39.23 ± 22.09 minutes, and total sleep duration was 198.15 ± 128.42 minutes (approximately 3 hours and 18 minutes), which is significantly below recommended levels. The average number of awakenings recorded 24.85. In terms of diagnostic performance, the RCSQ demonstrated excellent discriminative ability (AUC = 1.00 for the total score), while ACT showed more variable results: Total sleep duration had a good AUC of 0.91, while sleep latency showed a lower performance with an AUC of 0.50. Conclusion: The RCSQ proved to be more reliable than ACT in assessing sleep quality in ICU patients, providing consistent results across multiple parameters, including sleep depth, latency, and number of awakenings. Conversely, ACT yielded less consistent findings, particularly regarding sleep latency and nighttime interruptions. Further studies are warranted to refine objective tools for evaluating sleep in critically ill patients.