Os efeitos da vigília prolongada sobre capacidade de deicsão dos combatentes

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The war professional ceased to be a simple warrior a long time ago where strength and muscles made the difference in combat and today a fine balance between cognitive ability and physical strength is needed. Discovering the influences that sleep deprivation has on the military in real or simulated operations grows in importance every day. Sleep has been the subject of study for years, and is currently focused on how the effects of its deprivation influence decision making. Several factors are necessary for the cognitive process of decision making to be achieved and, therefore, understanding how the individual reacts to these changes becomes important for combat. METHOD: Search the US National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE), Virtual Health Library (VHL) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) databases, using the following words as descriptors: military, sleep deprivation and decision making. The search phrase was obtained using the Boolean operators AND between the descriptors and OR among its synonyms. Articles containing MeSH terms in the title or abstract, published in indexed journals classified with Qualis A1 to B4, published in English, Spanish or Portuguese were included, and those with cross-references were excluded; studies of Monographs, Theses, Dissertations and studies that did not use sleep or military as an outcome, for that it was necessary to contain two MeSH terms in the title of the articles. RESULTS: Sleep deprivation affects numerous facets of decision-making, varying according to the situation in which the military is inserted and who the individual is. In fact, the articles worsened, some mildly extreme, in the factors that form the correct decision making in situations of real or simulated combat. CONCLUSION: Sleep affects several factors that influence decision making. Isolating these factors does not solve the problem since they are intrinsically linked. There is a range of simple solutions that can be taken when identifying which factor has been most affected, therefore knowing what to do when you realize what is being affected or regulating sleep to the maximum will help in solving the problems faced.