Patient profile and sleep abnormalities among the patients visiting a general physician in an urban slum area, Chittagong, Bangladesh

In general practice, a variety of patients visit general physicians (GPs) for different clinical conditions. There is an influence of seasonal patterns on patient output. Among those, sleep disturbances is a common presenting complaint. Thus, the objective of this study was to find a pattern of GP visits for patients throughout a year with a special emphasis on frequency of insomnia and its characters.

A total of 977 patients visiting the researcher, who is also a GP in an urban slum area of Chittagong town, Bangladesh, in 2013 participated in the study. Information regarding sleep pattern and comorbidity in the form of acute and chronic disease was collected using a questionnaire. Necessary data was retrieved from those documents and analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2007.

Of the 977 patients seen in the year 2013, there was a huge rush of patients from April to July. More female patients (59.7%) visited GPs than the male (40.3%) patients in which patients at both extremes of age (<12 years, 35.31%; >60 years, 21.3%) were the sufferers. Of all patients in whom most had short duration of sleep (53.8%) and others had delayed onset of sleep (24.8%) and early awakening (21.4%), insomnia was found to be present in 17.7% (173 of 977 patients). Among 173 patients with insomnia, 67 (39%) presented primarily with insomnia and other primary presenting medical problems, and 103 (61%) had insomnia that was extracted on further query. Among all, 95 (54.91%) had acute disease, 45 (26.01%) had chronic disease, and 33 (19.07%) had undetermined disease during the initial evaluation.

Sleep disorder is important comorbidity among patients with other medical conditions. Large-scale prevalence study with nationally representative sample is needed to find out the actual scenario of Bangladesh.