Abstracts

Rationale: Sleep disorders in children are common. Several studies have found an increase frequency of sleep problems in children with epilepsy when compared with normal controls. There have been no studies comparing the prevalence of sleep disorders of children with epilepsy and controls with no epilepsy who present to a Sleep Disorders Center for evaluation. Methods: We reviewed retrospectively all the children who presented at the New York Sleep Institute from December 2005 to December 2006. We included all the children ages 1 to 20 years-old. We noted the different sleep complaints, Polysomnographic data and final diagnoses and compared children with epilepsy with children referred from the community who did not have epilepsy. We compared the results using chi square and t-student using the JMP program for statistical analysis. Results: Twenty-three children met our inclusion criteria. Twelve children had epilepsy. The average age was 10.3 years in the epilepsy group and 9.7 years in the non-epilepsy group. The two groups had similar prevalence of symptoms of excessive daytime sleepiness, snoring, insomnia, non-restorative sleep, parasomnia and restless sleep. The Polysomnography results in children with epilepsy showed a sleep efficiency of 90.3% and a sleep latency of 16.1 minutes. Stage 1 sleep represented 3.1 %, stage 2 sleep 37.0%, slow wave sleep 49.8% and REM sleep 10.1%. There were no statistical significant differences with the control group. Among children with Epilepsy, there were 5 patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), 5 patients with Restless Legs Syndrome, 3 patients with Parasomnias, 1 patient with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome and 2 patients with Excessive daytime sleepiness. There were 9 patients with more than one diagnosis. Conclusions: The prevalence of sleep disorders in children with epilepsy is similar to the children with no epilepsy who present for evaluation at a Sleep disorders Center.