[Hypersomnia with periodic apneas (author's transl)].

Patients suffering from Pickwickian syndrome or primary hypoventilation syndrome present apneas of a predominantly obstructive type which follow one another without interruptions throughout the duration of sleep. It is not possible to ascribe the somnolence of these patients to carbonarcosis, because in most cases Pa CO2, though high during sleep, presents normal values or slightly higher than normal values during wakefulness. Obstructive apneas are the cause of this syndrome: the elimination of obstructive apneas by means of tracheostomy leads to a complete clinical recovery. Before they began to suffer from hypersomnia, all these patients had been snoring heavily for many years. Snoring is therefore a fixed stage in the evolution of this disease. The fact that the overall clinical and polygraphic characteristics of these syndromes are identical suggests that they all constitute a single nosographic entity, which we have called "hypersomnia with periodic apneas".