[Physiologic all-night sleep in patients with severe forms of epilepsy]

100 all night sleep records in 90 patients with various forms of epilepsy and 10 patients with syncope were analyzed. There were 10 patients with generalized epilepsy, 41-with partial epilepsy with complex symptomatology and temporal foci, 23--with mixed seizures and frontal focal changes and 16 patients with partial epilepsy with simple seizures and various location of EEG foci. Normal sleep pattern was present in 21% of cases. The most frequent changes of sleep pattern were: prolongation of sleep onset and the latency of the first episode of REM, instability of sleep stages and absence of sleep spindles. Interictal discharges appeared mostly in all sleep stages of NREM. 50% of epileptic patients showed focal spikes in REM. Nocturnal seizures occurred in 18 patients, in several of them very frequently.