Aim Sleep disturbances are frequently seen in the epileptic patients. This may be because of either own epilepsy, or by chance, or because of the antiepileptics used. We tried to figure out the effects of epilepsy and antiepileptic drugs on the sleep structure.

Methods We questioned 35 epileptic patients, who are followed up by Medical Faculty of Trakya University, Department of Pediatrics, Division Pediatric Neurology, and their 35 healty siblings with Pediatric Sleep Questionnaires which were filled up by patients’ families. Patients’ structures of sleep were evaluated by asking the following questions regarding behaviours in night sleep and daytime sleep, behaviours in daytime, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity.

Results We have ascertained that totally questionnaire points of epileptic childrens’ behavioral problems, sleep-related behavioral disorders, breathe problems, frequency rate of wake up at nights, sweating during sleep, long lasting fall a sleep time, difficulty on fall asleep, nightmare problems, feeling weary after sleep, somnambulism scores were higher than the ones of their healthy siblings. Also as the epileptic group were evaulated according to their antiepileptic treatment we did not find a significant difference between the different antiepileptic treatments.

Conclusions Sleep disturbances frequently faces in the epileptic facts and there are few studies about this issue. As indicated in our study, sleep structure is not normal in epileptic patients eventhough seizures are under control by treatment. The evaluation of sleep disturbances should be the main part of further treatment of epileptic patients.