Positional Plagiocephaly

  • Etiology: Deformation of skull due to infant consistently placed in same position for rest and sleep
  • Imaging:
    — Deformed skull looks like parallelogram
    — Is diagnosis of exclusion by ruling out unilateral lambdoid craniosynostosis
  • DDX: Unilateral lambdoid craniosynostosis
  • Complications:
  • Treatment: Helmet for months
  • Clinical:
    — Plagios = oblique
    — Positional plagiocephaly is most common cause of plagiocephaly and incidence is increasing after Back to Sleep campaign for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome prevention
    — 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