Quickly diagnosed and treated prepubertal Type 1 narcolepsy case

Abstract

Excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucination are the classic tetrad of narcolepsy. It has been shown that narcolepsy, a chronic and disabling disease, starts in childhood and adolescence rather than adulthood. The International Classification of Sleep Disorder (ICSD-3) classifies narcolepsy into Type 1 (narcolepsy with cataplexy) and Type 2 (narcolepsy without cataplexy). There is low awareness and knowledge of narcolepsy among the general public, primary care physicians, and sleep specialists. It has been shown that the lack of recognition of disease symptoms delayed the diagnosis of narcolepsy from 8.7 to 22.1 years. In this case report, we will discuss the case of Type 1 narcolepsy, which started in the prepubertal period and was diagnosed and treated in a short period of time.

Keywords

• Cataplexy
• narcolepsy
• prepubertal
• sleep disorders