Researching the effects of sleep on step count during the postoperative period

Identifying factors associated with improved mobility in older adults with hip fracture is vital to optimize long-term functional recovery. The impact of sleep deprivation on mobility and other outcomes after hip fracture surgery has not been well described, in part due to challenges with objective measurement of sleep in hospital. Patient-reported measures such as sleep diaries and surveys are known to overestimate total sleep time,1 and objective measures such as polysomnography are challenging to use in the inpatient setting.Activity monitors permit the continuous collection of step counts and sleep rhythms. Fitbit devices may overestimate total sleep time but show acceptable agreement with polysomnography2 and subjective estimates.3 Fitbit devices have been validated in community-dwelling older adults4 and used to measure step counts in older inpatients.5, 6 We examined the association of total sleep time measured by a wrist accelerometer with postoperative mobility and other outcomes in older inpatients recovering from hip fractures.