Positional Plagiocephaly

  • Etiology: deformation – infant consistently placed in same position for rest and sleep
  • Imaging: is diagnosis of exclusion, need to rule out unilateral lambdoid craniosynostosis, deformed skull looks like parallelogram
  • Treatment: helmet for months
  • Clinical: plagios = oblique, positional plagiocephaly is most common cause of plagiocephaly and incidence increasing after Back to Sleep campaign, other cause of anterior plagiocephaly is unilateral coronal craniosynostois and other cause of posterior plagiocephaly is unilateral lambdoid craniosynostosis

Radiology Cases of Positional Plagiocephaly

Radiograph of positional plagiocephaly
AP (left) and lateral (right) radiographs of the skull show the bilateral coronal sutures and lambdoid sutures and sagittal suture to be patent. There is some mild flattening along the posterior aspect of the skull