Sleep Disorders
Treating Difficult-To-Diagnose Disorders
More than 70 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. But many people are unaware they have a problem, in part because some sleep disorders can be difficult to diagnose and frequently resemble other conditions, especially epilepsy.
To help you quickly diagnose and develop a treatment plan for patients with sleep disorders, the University of Virginia Health System's new multidisciplinary Neurological Sleep Disorders program - the only one of its kind in Central Virginia - has built a team of neurologists, pulmonary specialists and psychologists.
While the bulk of sleep disorders and sleep centers focus on pulmonary disorders, such as sleep apnea, UVA's Neurological Sleep Disorders program "is able to look at portions of sleep medicine that don't fall into that slice," says program director Mark Quigg, M.D., M.Sc.
The program functions like a triage unit, says Quigg, who has a background in epileptology, clinical neurophysiology and chronobiology. Together with the treatment team's pulmonary and psychological specialists, Quigg is able to promptly determine the patient's best treatment path - which may be to UVA's epilepsy unit, to the Sleep Disorders Center to treat sleep apnea or to a psychologist to treat behavior insomnia.
Patients benefit from the treatment team's experience, as well as leading-edge diagnostics, including sleep studies that bring together a computer-analyzed full EEG with infrared video to provide the complete picture of a patient's sleep patterns.
Along with sleep disorders such as night terrors, REM behavior disorders and daytime hypersomnias such as narcolepsy and cataplexy, the program also assists patients with sleep disorders that manifest themselves as part of neurological diseases.
Many patients with multiple sclerosis, Quigg says, have difficulty sleeping and constantly feel fatigued. In some cases, that may be caused by sleep apnea; but in other cases, the sleep patterns of MS patients are similar to patients with depression, who often suffer from insomnia. To treat MS patients with insomnia, UVA neurologists and psychologists also provide a group therapy program to teach patients how to obtain better and more restful sleep and improve their daytime functioning.
To refer a patient to the Neurological Sleep Disorders program, call UVA Physician Direct at 800-552-3723.