Relationship of Sleep and Epilepsy: Evaluation of noeturnal epileptic patients

Abstract

Some types of seizures occur only during sleep. Also the similarities between the normalbrain activity occuring during sleep and the basic mechanisms of epilepsy have been noticed long time ago. These clinical observations and physiological similarities between sleep and epilepsy have been the subject of several studies. In this study, we evaluated 119 epileptic patients who had seizures during sleep and then grouped them into pure sleep epilepsy group and mixed type (patients with seizures occuring during sleep and wakefulness) group. These groups were compared for seizure type, seizure frequency, response to therapy, and sleep eyde in which seizure appeared. These findings were discussed in the light of related literature.