Your child’s sleep care team includes physicians who are board certified in pediatric pulmonology and neurology, plus highly trained sleep technologists. We have the region’s only pediatric neurologist who is certified in sleep medicine. Our Behavioral Health Services team helps evaluate children with insomnia. Our Developmental Pediatrics team may help evaluate younger patients (those under age 6).
When needed, our treatment team can include other Baystate Health pediatric specialists. These specialists provide services to treat conditions that may be causing your child’s sleep problem.
Your child’s doctor may recommend a sleep study, or polysomnogram, to help get to the root of the sleep problem. During the study, our medical staff will watch your child sleep, as this test records your child’s brain waves, heart rate, breathing, and more.
Baystate Children’s Hospital is the only facility in the western Massachusetts region to offer hospital-based, pediatric sleep studies, and the only one to offer sleep studies for babies and children under age three. These studies are performed in the Baystate Neurodiagnostics and Sleep Center, which offers special amenities for children, under the direction of board certified pediatric neurologists.
Your child will stay overnight in one of our private, home-like pediatric bedrooms or cribs. A parent can stay close by in a separate sleep room for family. Our staff will make you and your child as comfortable as possible throughout this painless process.
If your child snores or has trouble breathing at night, a sleep study may help doctors find out if your child has a condition like OSA. Children with untreated OSA may be at greater risk of heart, behavior, learning, and growth problems.
If your child is diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, we can refer you to pediatric ear, nose, and throat specialists (ENT or otolaryngologist). Many children with OSA have larger tonsils and adenoids. The most common treatment is to remove your child’s tonsils and/or adenoids (tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy). We can also refer you to one of our pediatric pulmonologists for further testing.
In addition to testing for OSA, we evaluate patients for sleep-related hypoventilation, including those with significant chronic pulmonary and neuromuscular disorders, and nocturnal epilepsy.