Effects of Partial Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Function of Anesthesiologists

PVT has emerged as one of the most widely used tools to assess vigilant attention. Vigilance can be defined as sustained attention and tonic alertness. In sleep deprived individuals, vigilance is the component of cognition that is most consistently and dramatically affected. The PVT is a reaction-time test that allows the collection of a large amount of data in a relatively short period of time. These characteristics increase the sensitivity of the test to detect even small changes in vigilant attention, which can wax and wane within seconds.

"Epworth Sleepiness Scale a set of questions that assess excessive daytime sleepiness during professional activities and vacations.~This scale was designed to assess the efficiency of sleep apnea treatments. It is also used for the subjective sleepiness assessment based on the likelihood of falling asleep in different everyday life situations. This results in an overall score."

"The KSS is assumed to be an ordinal scale with a unitary structure. KSS scores may require standardization to control for differences between subjects. The changes observed in the EEG/EOG with drowsiness do not usually appear until KSS scores reach 7 and higher. Lower KSS scores (\<5) may reflect differences in the subjective awareness of fatigue as much, or more than, levels of drowsiness.~Higher KSS scores (7+) may refer more specifically to the state of drowsiness because the subject may then have experienced involuntary dozing behavior, with lapsing episodes and brief loss of awareness of the here-and-now, followed by arousal and the return of awareness, including some awareness of recently having dozed off"

Most variants of this test, which was apparently introduced in 1938 by Partington (Partington \& Leiter, 1949), have at least two conditions. In condition A the participant is to draw lines to connect circled numbers in a numerical sequence (i.e., 1-2-3, etc.) as rapidly as possible. In condition B the participant is to draw lines to connect circled numbers and letters in an alternating numeric and alphabetic sequence (i.e., 1-A-2-B, etc.) as rapidly as possible.