Donata Villani • Maria Vittoria Meraviglia
Editors

2014

This book provides an updated review of the scientific literature on positional plagiocephaly, a subject that became topical after the publication of the 1992 AAP guidelines to prevent “sudden infant death syndrome,” and is partially based on a previous book published in the Italian language, whose boundaries are here well updated and expanded. The habit to put newborns to sleep in the supine position has led to an increasing “epidemic” of flattened head among otherwise healthy babies: following this recommendation, the incidence of the positional etiology began to sharply rise from 1 in 300 to as high as 48 %, depending on the criteria. The other cause of posterior plagiocephaly, lambdoid craniosynostosis, however, has remained the lowest of all single-suture craniosynostoses and occurs in only 3 in 100,000 live births.