OBJECTIVES: Insomnia is the most common sleeping disorder, increasing as people get older, which therefore creates an increase in the use of hypnotics. The presence of insomnia in elderly people, according to different authors, ranges between 17 and 43% depending on the criteria of diagnosis used and the group of population studied. The objectives of this study are to determine the prevalence of insomnia in a population of 65 years and over in a Basic Health Area and the medical consumption related to it.
DESIGN: A cross sectional study by means of an ad hoc questionnaire about sleeping habits given by medical staff, including social demographic variables, psychotropic medication consumption, cognitive assessment by means of Mini Mental Status Examination and a range of anxiety-depression of Goldberg. Hartman and DSM-IV criteria were used for the insomnia diagnosis.
SETTING: Cuenca I Primary Care Center, Cuenca (Spain).
PATIENTS: A random sample of 343 patients of a population of 2253, 65 years and over.
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The prevalence found was 13.6% (Hartman) and 30.7% (DSM-IV) more common amongst women (p < 0.005), sufferers of psychiatric illnesses (p < 0.01) and those at the top-half of the anxiety-depression scale (p < 0.001). A 46.1% suffer from daylight hypersomniac. A 19.1% takes some kind of medication to help them sleep and the 74.6% of them take it daily. Long and short plasma half-life benzodiazepines are the most consumed, with women and insomniacs being the majority consumers.
CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of insomnia in our population is slightly inferior to that of other studies and the consumption of sleep-enhancing medication although inappropriate is similar to that referred to in literature.
