Abstracts

Rationale: Catathrenia is characterised by the production of nocturnal groaning during episodes of prolonged expiration. Frontal lobe seizures causing vocalization can be mistaken for catathrenia. It is important to distinguish frontal lobe seizures from catathrenia as their treatments differ markedly. There is indeed some evidence supporting the use of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine in patients with catathrenia. There is a paucity of literature that focus on the topic of distinguishing between these two disorders. There are at least two cases of patients with epilepsy who coincidentally developed Catathrenia but, to our knowledge, this is the first case report of frontal seizures mascareding as catathrenia. Methods: We report on  a 33 year-old man with a 10-year history of nocturnal spells consisting in moaning and groaning sounds that would occasionally wake him up at night. Results: A sleep study revealed mild to moderately severe sleep disordered breathing and the possibility of catathrenia was raised. On continuous video-EEG, however, frequent interictal epileptic discharges from the right temporo-centro-frontal regions were captured on EEG during sleep coinciding with his spells of groaning. We review the features of catathrenia and nocturnal seizures which help distinguish the two disorders. Conclusions: Frontal lobe epilpetic seizures should be considered in the differential diagnosis of catathrenia. Funding: No funding was received to support this abstract.