Sleep patterns in children and adolescents with functional recurrent abdominal pain: objective versus subjective assessment

Aim: To document objective sleep patterns of children and adolescents with functional recurrent abdominal pain (RAP), and to compare them with subjective sleep assessments and sleep patterns of healthy controls. Methods: Subjective sleep reports and sleep habit assessments were obtained from 25 adolescents with functional RAP and from 15 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers, and were compared with continuous movement monitoring using the Actigraph for 7 consecutive days. Results: Abdominal pain before falling asleep was a unanimous complaint in the RAP group, with 29% reporting awakening from sleep by the pain. Only 25% of RAP patients assessed their sleep quality as good, compared with 87% of the control group. Objective sleep patterns measurements of the RAP patients were similar to those of the control group as well as to measurements observed in a large population of school-aged children and adolescents.

Conclusion: This study of a small group of children and adolescents with functional RAP provides objective evidence that their sleep patterns do not differ from those of normal peers, despite their subjective complaints.