• Tina Ramineni, Julia Prusik, Samik Patel, Steven Lange, Jessica Haller, Chris Fama, Charles Argoff, and Julie Pilitsis.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY, USA.
• Neuromodulation. 2016 Jul 1; 19 (5): 477-81.

BackgroundStudies of chronic pain show sleep disturbances to be a prevalent symptom in 50-88% of patients and studies show improved pain to correspond with improved sleep. The impact of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) on sleep in failed back surgery syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome, and neuropathic pain patients has not been studied prospectively.ObjectivesWe prospectively assess the impact of SCS on sleep quality using the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Further we examine the correlations between sleep and pain.MethodsPatients who underwent permanent SCS implantation completed six validated questionnaires to compare sleep patterns, pain intensity, and quality of life at baseline and six months postoperatively. Results were analyzed via paired samples t-tests and bivariate analysis.ResultsData from 27 patients were collected. We saw a significant decrease in ISI scores (n = 23, t(df)=2.9(22), p = 0.008), and noted a trend in the percentage improvement between ISI and ESS (n = 12, t(df)=2.0(10), p = 0.078). We did not see any significant improvement in ESS. However, improvements in insomnia correlated with pain intensity as measured through visual analog scale score and McGill Pain Questionnaire (R = 0.546, p = 0.007 and R = 0.559, p = 0.006, respectively).DiscussionWe demonstrate that insomnia scores on ISI improve with SCS at six-month follow-up. Further, we find that improvements in pain correlate with these ISI improvements.© 2016 International Neuromodulation Society.

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