Sleep and Breathing in Infants and Young Children

This book addresses one of the major issues of modern pediatrics: the relationship between sleep and breathing in infants. The content of this book is based on the author's personal experience, as well as on up-to-date findings in the field. The necessity to present the most important knowledge on sleep physiology, sleep structure in infants, mechanisms supporting respiration in normal infants, functional changes in certain sleep stages, as well as the most characteristic forms of breathing disturbances in sleeping infants was taken into consideration. Chronobiological aspects of functional respiratory characteristics have also been tackled. Much attention has been paid to the quality of infant behavior associated with sleep disturbances and breathing disturbances in sleep, relationship between micro environmental characteristics and sleep impairments. Possible association between infant apnea and sudden infant death syndrome is considered as well; other topics include mechanisms of infant snoring in sleep and its relation to the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome; sleep-related breathing disturbances occurring against a background of chronic broncho-pulmonary diseases, and possible approaches to clinical studies in infants with sleep-related breathing disturbances and their treatment.