Search

Rhythmic movement disorder, also known as jactatio capitis nocturna, is an infancy and childhood sleep-related disorder characterized by repetitive movements occurring immediately prior to sleep onset and sustained into light sleep. We report a 19-year-old man with a history of headbanging and repetitive bodyrocking since infancy, occurring on a daily basis at sleep onset. He was born a premature baby but psychomotor milestones were unremarkable. Physical and neurological diagnostic workups were unremarkable. A hospital-based sleep study showed: total sleep time: 178 min; sleep efficiency index 35.8; sleep latency 65 min; REM latency 189 min. There were no respiratory events and head movements occurred at 4/min during wakefulness, stages 1 and 2 NREM sleep. No tonic or phasic electromyographic abnormalities were recorded during REM sleep. A clinical diagnosis of rhythmic movement disorder was performed on the basis of the clinical and sleep studies data. Clonazepam (0.5 mg/day) and midazolam (15 mg/day) yielded no clinical improvement. Imipramine (10 mg/day) produced good clinical outcome. In summary, we report a RMD case with atypical clinical and therapeutical features.

The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) measures daytime sleepiness in adults. This paper reports the following data in 616 medical students: 1-ESS scores, 2-its correlation with the declared night sleep time, 3-comparison with ESS values obtained from Australia, 4-comparison of ESS values in a sub-population of 111 students tested early and late 1995. There were 387 males, 185 females and 4 not specified. Age = 20.16 +/- 2.23 (SD), ESS score = 10.00 +/- 3.69 (SD), declared sleep time = 7.04 +/- 1.03 (SD). ESS scores did not statistically correlate with sleep time. Average ESS score was statistically higher than in the Australian sample. Retesting of the medical students showed an increase in ESS values from March to November 1995. Sleep time difference was non-significant. Higher ESS scores in this sample seem to be related to shorter sleep time, but fatigue effects can not be ruled out.