Melatonin prescribing – the potential and the pitfalls
Agenda
Professor Gringras has specialised in the fields of Paediatric Neurodisability and Paediatric Sleep Medicine after formal training in Chicago in 2003 under Professor Stephen Sheldon.
Professor Gringras is founder and service lead of one of the few UK paediatric specialist sleep clinics with a holistic approach that addresses behavioural, genetic and neurological causes of sleep disorder, in addition to commoner sleep related breathing problems. The clinic provides a National Narcolepsy service supporting over 180 children and young people with narcolepsy at present. The Children’s Sleep Medicine Department integrates fully with the adult sleep service already established at St Thomas’ hospital, as part of the ‘Lifespan Sleep disorders’ group.
Professor Gringras lectures and run workshops at National and International conferences. He has written over 50 peer reviewed papers, one book and several key book chapters. He holds research grants totalling over two million pounds in fields of Neurodisability and Sleep medicine. He lectures internationally and serves on the International Paediatric Sleep Association and British Paediatric Sleep Association executive committees. He has contributed to NHS England national reviews of policies and services for narcolepsy and sleep medicine from 2014 – present as well
as co-leading the NIHR BioResource – Rare Diseases Narcolepsy study project. His studies include epidemiological work tracking sleep patterns in large numbers of UK children as well as interventional studies, including two of the largest randomised controlled trials of melatonin in neurodevelopmental disorders to date, a trial of weighted blankets in Autism, sleep related breathing problems in children with Down's syndrome, and the cognitive impact of acute sleep restriction in children.
He has co-developed novel tools to assess sleep-related learning in children (Sleepsuite), wrote KidssleepDr a free iOS app to help parents whose children have sleep problems, and authored the MindEd tutorial on sleep difficulties.
• Evelina London Children’s Sleep Medicine Department www.evelinalondon.nhs.uk/sleep
• CASTLE Study http://castlestudy.org.uk
• MindED www.minded.org.uk/course/view.php?id=86
What will the webinar cover?
Key learning objectives
- To explore the role of melatonin in the management of sleep difficulties in young people with neurodevelopmental disorders.
