Dream Anxiety in Patients with Rapid Eye Movement Dependent Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome

Aims: The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the breathing disorders that arise during sleep and are predominantly observed in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase onto the dreams which have negative effects on daily life. While doing this, we also investigated differences between the REM dependent and non REM dependent obstructive sleep apnea syndrome groups in terms of some sociodemographic and clinical characteristics.

Methods: Seventy patients who had got the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) according to American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) were included into the study. Twenty of them were selected from those who had REM dependent OSAS.

Results: No significant difference was observed on dream anxiety levels between the groups (p=0,27). Dream anxiety level was not found significantly related to clinical characteristics. We determined that the arousal index of non REM dependent OSAS group was significantly higher than that of REM dependent group (p<0,05).

Conclusion: Because of arousals, a rise in the frequency of remembering dreams in the non REM dependent group may also have an effect on increased dream anxiety. Probably this fact might have caused us not to find any differences with the REM dependent group which is accepted to have higher dream anxiety.