INTRODUCTION: Posture science enhancement pays for the present settlement of medical scientific society, this study proposes a different approach and explains the evidences yielded. CASE REPORT: an adult white male lamenting chronic unilateral motor disorder has been submitted to a long and thorough evaluation process by means of a method designed to fully exploit patient’s collaboration and underwent intermediate non invasive therapeutic attempts  for differential diagnosis exclusion; final analysis highlights Tongue Motor Insufficiency (TMI), owed to nerve entrapment, as pathogenetic factor of the claimed symptoms as well as of a wider symptomatic picture hereby baptized platania’s syndrome.

DISCUSSION: According to the observations, platania’s syndrome is the result of a permanent unilateral muscular spasm aimed at Cranio-Cervical Extension (CCE) and promoted by three actions: 1) main promoter is respiration, triggering Upper Airway Patency Maintenance Reflex (UAPMR) due to unilateral airflow augmented resistance, 2) Head Flexion Insufficiency (HFI) induced by extrinsic tongue muscles weakness and 3) Mandible Retrusion (MR), induced by teeth conflicts, further increasing airflow resistance due to tongue backward motion. Common pathogenesis of all three actions is TMI and the neurogenic etiology is Hypoglossal Rootlets Emergence Entrapment (HREE) under vertebral artery slightly deviated left branch. The complex mechanics, pathomechanics and etiopathogenesis are discussed along with their evidences and further validated by an accurate protocol.

CONCLUSION: the theorized cause-effect relationship between “HREE / TMI / UAPMR-HFI-MR / CCE / head and neck posture / body posture / postural syndrome” along with it’s etiopathogenetic factor, not only explains platania’s syndrome, but, since observation and existing literature confirm this conditions to be as diffuse as overlooked, suggests a broad appliance to this theory.

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Paolo Platania

This article originally appeared in Posture, etiology of a syndrome