PJ’s

PJ Paralysis – Muscle wasting “one of the biggest health threats” in hospital.

If you need to go into hospital, you might be nervous about various risks, like catching a superbug or something going wrong during surgery.

But there’s one source of risk that gets far less attention. That’s the impact of muscle wasting caused by lying in bed for days at a time. Such “deconditioning”, as Drs call it, is one of the biggest threats to health from a hospital stay.

Muscle loss leads to patients spending longer in hospital than they would otherwise have need to, and makes patients more likely to fall and hurt themselves while there.

It is especially risky for older people, but deconditioning happens in young people too. In one study just seven days of bed rest led young healthy men to lose 2.5 % of their muscle mass. “It is one of the biggest overlooked causes of ill health, and yet it is flexible” – according to Professor Dolan of University of Salford. He is urging health staff to help hospital patients avoid deconditioning. Medics often refer to the problem as “pyjama paralysis” because if patients get changed into their day clothes, it can encourage them to walk around more.

Relatives can also help by both brining in day clothes and encouraging patients to get up and walk around. If patients cannot walk far, even just getting changed and sitting in a chair for meals is better than lying down in bed all day. If you are well enough to be eating, then generally, you are well enough to be out of bed to have your lunch.

Hospitals with “mobilisation” policies to encourage patients out of bed earlier usually have measurable benefits. One Canadian study found that patients could go home on average 2 days sooner. This saves the NHS money and shortens your hospital stay. Mobilisation reduces bed sores, cuts chest infections, reduces constipation and improves blood sugar control.

For those patients who are ventilated and unconscious, physios use devices that move patient’s arms and legs to get the muscles working. A study found that this reduced the time in intensive care by 6 days.