Trial reportChronobiology international2023
Sound and light levels in intensive care units in a large urban hospital in the United States.
Trial report in Chronobiology international, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. It is linked to trial NCT03355053 (Investigation of Sleep in the Intensive Care Unit), which is not on this map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Investigation of Sleep in the Intensive Care Unit
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Recent Evidence on Factors and Potential Interventions Affecting Patient Sleep in Inpatient and Hospital Settings.Current psychiatry reports · 2026Review
- Sleep physiology and critical illness: A narrative review.Journal of the Intensive Care Society · 2026Review
- Too noisy, too dark: sleep environment at a typical stroke unit.European stroke journal · 2026Article
- Noise in the Intensive Care Unit: A Narrative Review of Its Characteristics, Clinical Impact, and Reduction Strategies.Critical care research and practice · 2026Review
- Article
- One for the ages: optimizing geriatric care in the intensive care unit.Trauma surgery & acute care open · 2025Review
- Impact of Intermediate Care Unit Architecture on Noise, Light, and Delirium Incidence.Noise & healthArticle
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issuedCorrection.2023
Authors and funding
24 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Intensive care units (ICUs) may disrupt sleep. Quantitative ICU studies of concurrent and continuous sound and light levels and timings remain sparse in part due to the lack of ICU equipment that monitors sound and light. Here, we describe sound and light levels across three adult ICUs in a large urban United States tertiary care hospital using a novel sensor. The novel sound and light sensor is composed of a Gravity Sound Level Meter for sound level measurements and an Adafruit TSL2561 digital luminosity sensor for light levels. Sound and light levels were continuously monitored in the room of 136 patients (mean age = 67.0 (8.7) years, 44.9% female) enrolled in the Investigation of Sleep in the Intensive Care Unit study (ICU-SLEEP; Clinicaltrials.gov: #NCT03355053), at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The hours of available sound and light data ranged from 24.0 to 72.2 hours. Average sound and light levels oscillated throughout the day and night. On average, the loudest hour was 17:00 and the quietest hour was 02:00. Average light levels were brightest at 09:00 and dimmest at 04:00. For all participants, average nightly sound levels exceeded the WHO guideline of < 35 decibels. Similarly, mean nightly light levels varied across participants (minimum: 1.00 lux, maximum: 577.05 lux). Sound and light events were more frequent between 08:00 and 20:00 than between 20:00 and 08:00 and were largely similar on weekdays and weekend days. Peaks in distinct alarm frequencies (Alarm 1) occurred at 01:00, 06:00, and at 20:00. Alarms at other frequencies (Alarm 2) were relatively consistent throughout the day and night, with a small peak at 20:00. In conclusion, we present a sound and light data collection method and results from a cohort of critically ill patients, demonstrating excess sound and light levels across multiple ICUs in a large tertiary care hospital in the United States. ClinicalTrials.gov, #NCT03355053. Registered 28 November 2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03355053.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.