Imagine you are about to drift off to sleep when a loud bang rings in your ears. You scramble. It’s nighttime, and nothing you noticed made the noise in your home or outside. Your heart racing and head spinning, you question what you heard and where it came from.
Now you’re tasked with falling back asleep.
The scenario is often real for people with exploding head syndrome (EHS), a condition that can be as distressing as its name.
Key Points:
- Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is a rare and painless sleep disorder where people hear loud noises as they are falling asleep or waking up, sometimes with sleep paralysis, visual phenomena or muscle sensations.
- Poor recognition of EHS and no proven therapies have made treatment challenging.
- CU Anschutz researchers recently published a case study on a patient suffering from severe EHS who was treated with ketamine with some success, prompting a call for more studies.
Bertrand Liang, MD, PhD, a molecular biologist, clinical neurologist and adjoint instructor at CU Anschutz, has studied and treated exploding head syndrome, which – despite its evocative name – remains a relatively unknown condition.
When to seek medical care:
- Symptoms occurring frequently
- Significant sleep disruption
- Anxiety affecting daily life
- Symptoms that could indicate another neurological condition
“Exploding head syndrome has been identified for decades, but only gained diagnostic criteria in 2014,” Liang said. “We have medical residents today that haven’t heard of it, so it’s our job to make it more prominent so patients feel comfortable talking to providers about it.”
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Liang and colleagues recently published a case study on using ketamine to treat chronic EHS. He discusses the study in the following Q&A and details EHS, including the challenges surrounding its treatment.