• Giuseppe Loddo, Giusy La Fauci, Luca Vignatelli, Corrado Zenesini, Rosalia Cilea, Francesco Mignani, Annagrazia Cecere, Susanna Mondini, Luca Baldelli, Francesca Bisulli, Laura Licchetta, Barbara Mostacci,... more Pietro Guaraldi, Giulia Giannini, Paolo Tinuper, and Federica Provini. less
• Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
• Sleep Med. 2021 Apr 1; 80: 279-285.

BackgroundArousal Disorders (DoA) include Confusional Arousals, Sleepwalking and Sleep Terrors. DoA diagnosis is mainly clinical but no validated questionnaires exist for DoA screening according to the criteria of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, Third Edition. Recently our group proposed the Arousal Disorders Questionnaire (ADQ) as a new diagnostic tool for DoA diagnosis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the ADQ in a sleep and epilepsy center.MethodsOne interviewer blinded to clinical and video-polysomnographic (VPSG) data administered the ADQ to 150 patients consecutively admitted to our Sleep and Epilepsy Centers for a follow-up visit. The final diagnosis, according to VPSG recordings of at least one major episode, classified patients either with DoA (DoA group) or with other sleep-related motor behaviors confounding for DoA (nDoA group).Results47 patients (31%) composed the DoA group; 56 patients with REM sleep behavior disorder, 39 with sleep-hypermotor epilepsy, six with night eating syndrome, and two with drug-induced DoA composed the nDoA group. The ADQ had a sensitivity of 72% (95% CI: 60-82) and a specificity of 96% (95% CI: 89-98) for DoA diagnosis; excluding the items regarding consciousness and episode recall, sensitivity was 83% (95% CI: 71-90) and specificity 93% (95% CI: 86-97).ConclusionsThe ADQ showed good accuracy in screening patients with DoA in a sleep and epilepsy center setting. Diagnostic criteria related to cognition and episode recall reduced ADQ sensitivity, therefore a better definition of these criteria is required, especially in adults.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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