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Lecture: Sleep Quality and Self-Reported Health Problems in Pre-Professional Dancers - Are they associated? (Sarah Kenny)Purpose: To determine the association between sleep quality and self-reported health problems in female pre-professional ballet and contemporary dancers.
Participants: A convenience sample of 21 female pre-professional ballet [n=11, median age 14.7 years (range 12.2-19.2)] and contemporary [n=10, median age 20.3 years (range 18.2-22.8)] dancers participated. Design: Cohort. Methods: Measures of sleep were obtained using a wrist-worn Actigraph wGT3X-BT accelerometer (Actigraph LLC, Pensacola, FL, USA) over five consecutive nights part way through the dance training year. Sleep efficiency (%) [(total sleep time/time in bed)×100] was estimated. Self-reported health problems (i.e., any musculoskeletal complaint or illness leading to difficulties participating in dance; yes/no) and dance exposure (hours) were captured by weekly online questionnaires (modified Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre Questionnaire on Health Problems) during the training year. Multivariable logistic regression evaluated associations between sleep efficiency and self-reported health problems, accounting for hours of dance exposure. Results: Median actigraph-measured sleep efficiency was 84.5% (range 71.0-99.9). Sixteen of 21 dancers (76%) reported at least one health problem during the study period. There was no association between sleep quality and self-reported health problems(β=-0.002, 95%CI -0.04, 0.04). Conclusions: The prevalence of health problems among pre-professional dancers is high and their quality of sleep is considered poor (sleep efficiency score <85%). While there was no association found between sleep quality and reported health problems in this sub-sample, a larger sample is required for further investigation of sleep and fatigue-related factors contributing to the high risk of injuries and illness in dance. |
Sarah J. Kenny |
In 2017, Dr. Kenny joined the University of Calgary as a tenure-track Assistant Professor (Dance Science) in the Faculties of Arts and Kinesiology. She currently teaches Safe Dance Practice and Dance Science courses for undergraduate dance majors and is a registered provider of the Safe in Dance International (SiDI) certificates. She also provides mentoring to students enrolled in the combined Bachelor of Arts (Dance) / Bachelor of Kinesiology undergraduate degree. Dr. Kenny is active in presenting her research, which focuses on the prevention of dance-related injuries, at national and international conferences and publishing in high impact journals. She currently sits on the Board of Directors and is Co-chair of the Dancer Screening Committee for Healthy Dancer Canada and serves on the Program Committee for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS).
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