Foreword

Sleep medicine, for most clinicians, is a new clinical discipline in medicine and one which has appeared almost overnight. To those who thought that all that needed to be known was taught in medical school or in other postgraduate clinical programs, the reality is that very little formal education in sleep medicine has occurred in clinical programs and the clinician is now faced with having to understand the basic science, the underlying physiology and pathophysiology of sleep, and apply that understanding to help diagnose and treat the more than 80 clinical sleep disorders that have currently been described1. This book, Case Studies in Sleep Neurology, goes a long way in helping the clinician develop the clinical skills to understand, diagnose and treat many of those 80 sleep disorders, but not all, and after reading this book the clinician will be left with an enthusiastic desire to expand his or her knowledge by seeking out and learning about the many additional sleep disorders that could not possibly be covered in this comprehensive volume. Although all of us sleep on a daily basis and appreciate the importance of full alertness in performing our occupational and social activities, many clinicians, other than those trained in sleep medicine, have little awareness of the importance of sleep and wake issues in the clinical practice of patients with medical, psychiatric and even surgical disorders. Sleep is a function of the brain, yet even in neurology there is still little appreciation of its importance in routine neurological practice.