Sleep Medicine in Iran: Current Practice, Challenges, and Future Direction

The Iranian Sleep Medicine (ISM) Society, established in 2005, has worked to increase public knowledge of how important sleep is to maintain health in the community and safety on the roads. The ISM has also had a strong role in the implementation of sleep tests and laboratory standards in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, training sleep specialists to diagnose and treat sleep disorders, certifying sleep labs to ISM standards, and conducting much needed research to improve sleep amongst Iranians. In this chapter, we will first introduce the current healthcare system highlighting the practice of sleep medicine in Iran. Next, we identify three challenges in delivering sleep medicine to millions of Iranians with potential solutions. The challenges are: (1) a limited number of trained sleep medicine specialists unequally distributed across all districts; (2) a limited number of certified sleep labs; (3) the need for insurance to pay for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and insomnia. Lastly, we present future directions for Iranian sleep research including much needed population-based studies to assess the prevalence of sleep disorders. While much progress has been made since 2005 to improve sleep health in Iran, we still have much work to do to reach our goal of significantly reducing disparities and promoting sleep medicine all over Iran toward a healthier future.