Julio C. Furlan, MD, LLB, MBA, PhD, MSc, FRCPC, FAAN, FASIA
The importance of restorative sleep for a person’s health and wellbeing cannot be overemphasized. It helps restore the immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems, and is a vital process to help us maintain mood, memory, and cognitive performance, as well as cardiovascular function and metabolism. The lack of regular refreshing sleep is a common complaint among individuals living with spinal cord injury (SCI) who are more vulnerable to develop different sleep disorders. The third edition of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD-3) describes seven main categories of sleep disorders: insomnia, sleep-related breathing disorders (including central, obstructive and mixed sleep apneas), sleep-related movement disorders (including restless leg syndrome and periodic limb movements during sleep), circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders, central disorders of hypersomnolence, and parasomnias. The first four categories are the most studied and frequent sleep disorders after SCI, but they still remain under-recognized, underdiagnosed and untreated in the SCI population. The aetiology of sleep disorders after SCI is multifactorial and, hence, a multidimensional approach is required. This presentation will review: (i) the frequency of the sleep disorders and their risk factors; (ii) challenges in the diagnosis and management of the sleep disorders after SCI; (iii) the potential effects of untreated sleep-related breathing disorders on other secondary medical conditions after SCI; and (iv) knowledge gaps in the in the literature on sleep disorders among individuals living with SCI.