Parasomnia in Pediatrics: A clinical view

Abstract

Abstract
A frequent chief complaint in pediatric practice are sleep disorders, which may affect up to 30% of the pediatric population. These may have harmful e ects on cognition, behavior and physical development (Meijer et al. 2000). These sleep disorders include parasomnias, unpleasant abnormal phenomena that occur during sleep and may be accompanied by cardiovascular and/or motor manifestations. These make up one third of all sleep disorders caused by disturbances of neural development or family patterns, with similar triggering factors, such as medication, fever, respiratory disorders and stress. When they coincide with neurological or neural development disorders they may be confused with other disease conditions, such as epilepsy, and be a diagnostic challenge for the pediatric neurologist. Parasomnias are the third cause of sleep disorders of childhood, originating in both hereditary genetic factors and others pertaining to neural development of the CNS. They are classified according to the stage of sleep they affect: disorders of waking, disorders of the sleep/waking transition, REM sleep associated disorders and other parasomnias. A growing body of evidence points to the effects of inadequate sleep hygiene and disorders of neural development, requiring, therefore, further research. This paper reviews current knowledge on the subject.