Purpose: To measure quality and quantity of sleep in patients before and after hip arthroplasty.

Methods: A prospective survey where 50 participants were sent a sleep diary, an acti-watch motion-logger, and a 32 item sleep questionnaire. These data were collected at least four weeks prior to and three months after surgery. Data analyses included descriptive statistics and within-subject pre and post surgery comparisons. For the subjective data, comparison was by the McNamar Test for the significance of changes. For the acti-graphy variables, comparison was by mixed model analysis of variance.

Results: Preliminary results indicate that subjective measures of sleep quality improve significantly three months after hip arthroplasty, e.g. patients rated their sleep disturbance due to hip-pain on a scale from 1=never to 4=always. 75% of patients reported an improvement, and 25% reported no change in this variable, post surgery. Acti-graphy measures confirm the overall improvement in sleep quality (for sleep efficiency, (p(f)=0.05) and fragmentation index, (p(f)=0.05), and a reduction in mean activity during sleep (p(f)=0.04). Ongoing analyses are addressing the reliability of subjective measures compared to acti-graphy and why some patients show greater improvement in sleep than others, after hip arthroplasty.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that sleep disturbance occurs as a result of painful osteoarthritis in the hip, and that this can be significantly ameliorated by hip arthroplasty surgery. The expected improvement in quality of life and level of day to day functioning that accompany improved sleep are perhaps an under-rated benefit of this procedure.