SLEEP DISORDERS IN CHILDREN

The diagnosis y treatment of sleep disorders in infants are constantly improving. Its prevalence in the child population can be as much as thirty percent, depending on how the condition is described. In this paper, sleep disorders in children are reviewed: insomnia, parasomnias and hipersomnias. Insomnia can be due to two causes: bad habits and psychological disorders. The first kind can affect children from six month to five years and it is described as the difficulty to start sleeping spontaneously and/or maintaining it all the night. The initial cause of this problem is the deficient organization due to inadequate associations that the child makes with his sleep, normally because the various changes that the parents make in their efforts to make the child sleep. The sleep of these children is sporadic, shorter and lighter and the repercussions range from irritability and dependency on the mother to growth upsets due to alteration on the rhythm of growth hormone secretion. Likewise, some parasomnias are described, including somnambulism, night terrors and nightmares, sleeptalking, bruxism and rhythmical body movements. Finally, hypersomnias are also presented, particularly sleep apnea syndrome in children.