Delayed diagnosis of narcolepsy and differential diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy / 中华实用儿科临床杂志

ABSTRACT

Narcolepsy is a rare sleep-wake rhythm disorder in clinic practice, mainly characterized by recu-rrent unstoppable sleep during the day and often accompanied by cataplexy, sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations.Clinicians′ insufficient knowledge about narcolepsy is one of the main causes of misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis.Moreover, narcolepsy may get easily confused by epilepsy because of complex and diverse types of epileptic seizures.Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the two forms each other.When they are comorbidity, the diagnosis and treatment will be much more difficult.In this article, the clinical characteristics of narcolepsy and the causes of delayed diagnosis were analyzed, differential diagnosis between narcolepsy and epilepsy was investigated, and practical expe-rience in diagnosis and treatment of comorbidities were summarized, so as to raise clinicians′ awareness of narcolepsy and its comorbidity with epilepsy and improve patients′ prognosis and their quality of life.