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Primary Sleep Disorders 141<br />

DEFINITION<br />

From: Current Clinical Neurology: Clinical Handbook of <strong>Insomnia</strong><br />

Edited by: H. P. Attarian © Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ<br />

141<br />

12<br />

<strong>Insomnia</strong> in Primary Sleep Disorders<br />

Stephen Duntley<br />

<strong>Insomnia</strong> is defined in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders as<br />

“difficulty in initiating and/or maintaining sleep” (1). In primary insomnia, the term<br />

insomnia constitutes a diagnostic entity. In other disorders it is considered a symptom<br />

and not a primary diagnosis. <strong>Insomnia</strong> is frequently a component of the symptom<br />

complexes of other primary sleep disorders, and is listed among the diagnostic<br />

criteria for the following dyssomnias: obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome,<br />

central sleep apnea syndrome, central alveolar hypoventilation syndrome, periodic<br />

limb movement disorder (PLMD), and restless legs syndrome (RLS). Disrupted<br />

sleep is among the diagnostic criteria for narcolepsy. The complaint of insomnia<br />

can also accompany parasomnias, and is listed among the diagnostic criteria for<br />

sleep starts and nightmares (1). As in other forms of insomnia, in order to be considered<br />

a clinically significant problem, the complaint of sleep disturbance must be<br />

associated with adverse daytime consequences such as fatigue, decreased concentration,<br />

or irritability.<br />

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES<br />

In what is likely the first report of RLS in the medical literature, Thomas Willis,<br />

an English physician, described a patient in the late 1600s for whom sleep was<br />

impossible because of restlessness in the arms and legs, which were compared to a<br />

person being tortured on the rack. There were subsequently sporadic reports of<br />

patients with similar symptoms, but the syndrome was not described in detail until<br />

the 1940s. A thorough description of the phenomenon of PLMs during sleep awaited<br />

development and clinical application of polysomnography, with typical features<br />

being described by Lugaresi and colleagues in 1966 (2). <strong>Insomnia</strong> associated with<br />

OSA was first described by Guilleminault and colleagues in 1973 (3). Since these<br />

initial reports, the common association between insomnia and these other sleep

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