Wang · Nature and science of sleep 2021 · narrative review · n=?

The Role of Perioperative Sleep Disturbance in Postoperative Neurocognitive Disorders.

Cited 103 times in the scientific literature.

Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data

Narrative review synthesizing mechanistic hypotheses and existing literature without primary data or systematic methodology.

PubMed 34393534 · doi:10.2147/NSS.S320745 · record verified 2026-08-27

What was done

This narrative review evaluated the relationship between perioperative sleep disturbance and postoperative neurocognitive disorders (PND), summarizing proposed biological mechanisms linking sleep deprivation to postoperative delirium and cognitive dysfunction.

What was found

The abstract reports no quantitative data, sample sizes, or effect estimates. It qualitatively outlines mechanisms linking perioperative sleep disturbance to PND, including neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, impaired blood-brain barrier and glymphatic clearance, decreased hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, reduced adult neurogenesis, decreased sirtuin1 expression, and amyloid-beta accumulation.

Why it matters

The review summarizes multiple neurobiological pathways connecting perioperative sleep loss to cognitive decline, highlighting perioperative sleep as a potential target to reduce postoperative neurocognitive complications.

Limits

This is a narrative review with no original data, systematic search protocol, or meta-analytic synthesis. The abstract provides no quantitative effect sizes or details on whether the proposed mechanisms are derived from human or animal experimental models.

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