Milena Pavlova, MD, is a board-certified neurologist with a dual subspecialty certification in Sleep Medicine and Epilepsy. She currently serves as the Medical Director of the BWFH Sleep Testing Center, and is involved in the training of medical students, neurology residents and epilepsy fellows. She has established combined polysomnogram and electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring of patients at the Faulkner Sleep Laboratory to evaluate patients with complex sleep disorders in the setting of neurological and psychiatric conditions and collaboratively lead the establishment of the circadian clinic. She is a recipient of the BWH Distinguished clinician award.
Dr. Pavlova’s reads EEGs and sleep tests daily in her clinical work and has lead research activities addressing the interactions between sleep and neurological disorders for more than a decade. Her past research projects have assessed various aspects of sleep and epilepsy with a specific focus on the circadian rhythm effects, publishing some of the first studies on the subject. This work has since been replicated in multiple different epilepsy centers, and further extended to explore the role of sleep and biological rhythms in the pathogenesis of sudden death in epilepsy patients (SUDEP) – the most devastating consequence of epilepsy.
Currently, Dr. Pavlova serves as principal investigator on several research studies aiming at optimizing diagnosis using objective EEG criteria. Since hypersomnia is common among patients with depression, and antidepressant medications can affect the results of sleep tests used in the evaluation of hypersomnia (typically a multiple sleep latency test [MSLT]), she currently leads a project that specifically aims at in patients with depression, who are still taking antidepressants at the time of the test. This project established a database of MSLT/sleep/EEG test results from five Harvard-affiliated hospitals, with inclusion of comorbidities and level of sleepiness. This allows more specific analysis of correlation between specific EEG and sleep parameters and depression symptoms of the participants.
