Doctors Answers (4)
Yes. We can test you during sleep walking...
Sleep studies may provide some insight into sleepwalking, and may be able to detect underlying sleep problems that contribute to it. However, since most sleepwalkers do not exhibit symptoms every night, polysomnography (sleep testing) may not detect sleepwalking episodes. Polysomnography usually is performed on only one night because the cost of repeated nights is prohibitive, so "catching" an episode of sleep walking can boil down to luck. It is important to talk to your doctor or sleep specialist about your sleep walking. A treatment plan may be able to be developed without sleep testing, so they may not consider it necessary.
Yes, an attended polysomnogram will help identify sleep walking or any other parasmonia or behvioural sleep disorder.
A sleep study can be very helpful to assess sleepwalking. However, unless the sleepwalking occurs nightly, it is not uncommon to miss the event on a single night in the sleep lab. The purpose of a sleep study is to determine the stage of sleep during which the sleep walking occurs. Often, this can be determined with a careful history and a bed partner's report. Sleep walking may be related to seizures, night terrors and REM behavior disorder. Again, the history is very important.
