The Importance of Routine Sleep Structure Assessment for Cardiovascular and Brain Health: Challenges and Future Directions

ABSTRACT

Sleep is a fundamental biological function. A multidimensional concept of sleep health includes several components: sleep regularity, satisfaction, alertness/sleepiness, timing, efficiency, duration, sleep disorders, and sleep architecture. The latter is underestimated in routine practice due to the existing challenges with its objective assessment using polysomnography. Nevertheless, novel technologies and machine learning approaches provide opportunities for a wider clinical implementation of sleep macrostructure assessment. However, reliable and well-performing non-EEG-based algorithms for sleep staging for patients with cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disorders are lacking. Further research is needed to develop non-EEG-based algorithm for sleep stage classification in patients with cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases and for long-term routine sleep monitoring.