Pattern of sleep disturbance among children with cerebral palsy

Abstract EN

Objective: to describe the pattern of sleep disturbances among children with CP (the age > 3 years) and to evaluate the relationship between sleep disturbances and neurological state.

Methodology: This descriptive study included 124 children with CP; (80 males and 44 females) with an age ranging from 4 to 10 years.

Children were randomly recruited from Pediatric Outpatient Clinic (IPGCS (throughout the period from June 2015 till the end of January 2016.

All participants were subjected to IQ test (Stanford- Binet Scale V5), EEG, the CSHQ and hemoglobin measurement.

Results: Out of 124 children, 92.7% had spastic CP, 6.5% had dyskinetic CP and0.8% had hypotonic CP.

Topographically spastic CPs were; 55.6% diplegic, while quadriplegia and hemiplegia were found in 28.2% and 8.9% of studied cases, respectively.

Degree of intellectual disability among cases was0.8% low average (89- 80), 8.1% were borderline (79- 70), 56.5% were mildly impaired, 14.5% were moderately impaired (54- 40), 12.1% were severely impaired (39- 25) and 8.1% were profound.

Hemoglobin estimation revealed that 8.1% were anemic.

Abnormal EEG was found in 70.2% of cases, 81.36% of the epileptic CP children and 60% of the non- epileptics had abnormal EEG findings, 27.4% had focal epileptiform, 18.5% had generalized slow wave, 16.9% had generalized epileptiform and 7.3% had multi- focal epileptiform.

Among the epileptic CP children; 52.54% experienced partial seizures and 47.46% experienced generalized seizures.

Out of all studied children, 48.38% showed abnormal total CSHQ score indicating a clinically distinct sleep disturbance.

There were significant correlation between sleep disturbance score and the degree of intellectual disability and also presence of epilepsy.

Conclusion: sleep disturbance was significantly correlated to several co- morbid conditions including the degree of intellectual disability and the presence of epilepsy.