A Comparison of the Telediagnostic and Medilog Systems for Recording Normal Sleep in the Home Environment

Two home recording systems, the Telediagnostic (TDS) and the Medilog, were used to compare sleep in the home environment with recorded sleep from the laboratory environment in 24 normal subjects (ages 21–42). Each subject was recorded for 4 consecutive nights, 2 each in the home and laboratory environments, in a counterbalanced order. All recorded sleep was manually scored for sleep latency, sleep efficiency, sleep maintenance, sleep stage architecture, REM sleep latency, and REM sleep activity. Complete data on 10 subjects using the TDS (Experiment 1) and 10 subjects using the Medilog System (Experiment 2) were available for statistical analyses. There were no significant differences in any of the nine sleep parameters tested by recording environment or order of recording environments using the Telediagnostic or the Medilog systems. Comparing the sleep parameters recorded across experiments, subjects recorded with the TDS took longer to fall asleep in the home environment than those subjects recorded with the Medilog System. The TDS demonstrated a clear superiority over the Medilog System in its sleep monitoring feasibility and its practical and economic advantages for carrying out home sleep studies.