Visit the Sleep Medicine Patient page
The Division of Sleep Medicine focuses on a comprehensive approach to sleep disorders. With almost 100 different sleep disorders to understand and treat, VUMC’s Sleep Medicine Divison prides itself on providing expertise, training and research on this wide array of sleep disorders across the lifespan. Research and treatment often takes place in the Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center's unique hotel-based sleep labs. The overarching clinical goal of the Sleep Medicine Division is to improve daytime functioning and quality of life of patients, particularly those also afflicted with other disorders.
The division has a particular interest in the relationship between sleep and various developmental disabilities, neurologic disorders, or other conditions. Clinicians, researchers, and educators invest themselves in studying how autism, Down syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, strokes, etc. affect sleep, and conduct integrative trials and interventional studies accordingly. The breadth and depth of faculty allows for clinical research to intersect with nearly any other discipline, including neurology, psychology, internal medicine, and others.
The Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center is accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and is a designated Restless Leg Syndrome Center of Excellence.
Research Highlights
Given the close relationship between sleep medicine and the other subspecialties of neurology, the studies undertaken by the Vanderbilt Sleep Medicine Division facilitate interdisciplinary research in sleep medicine. Investigators from a variety of disciplines are encouraged to add sleep studies into their research protocols, which can be performed in a prospective fashion on a specific cohort of patients. Researchers regularly perform overnight polysomnograms, including 21-channel EEG studies, multiple sleep latency tests, and related procedures on patients with a wide variety of sleep disorders and coexisting neurological disorders.
Highlights of current areas of research include:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy in insomnia
- Descriptive and interventional studies in autism and developmental disabilities
- The relationship between sleep apnea and stroke
- Several different studies on RLS
- Sleep and neurodevelopment in children
- Sleep and epilepsy
For more details about current areas of research on sleep disorders, visit the division’s research page.
Education & Training
Trainees in the Sleep Medicine Division will interface with clinicians and researchers across all neurology sub-specialties as well as faculty in other departments.
An ACGME-accredited fellowship in sleep medicine is available. Fellows will evaluate and manage patients with a wide variety of sleep disorders. For more information, visit the fellowship page.
Recent and Notable Publications