Dropped Head Syndrome associated with Motor Neurone Disease

Original Editor - Eugenie Lamprecht Top Contributors - Eugenie Lamprecht and Kim Jackson  

Introduction

Dropped head syndrome (DHS) is a rare condition characterized by severe weakness of neck extensors and may associate with weakness of shoulder girdle and proximal arm muscles. This occurs as a result of several neurological, neuromuscular, muscular, and other causes.

Neurological conditions that may lead to DHS include;

• • amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
  • Parkinson disease
  • multiple system atrophy,
  • cervical dystonia,
  • postpolio syndrome,
  • cervical myelopathy,
  • chronic inflammatory polyneuropathy (CIDP),
  • neuromuscular causes include myasthenia gravis (MG),
  • Lambert-Eaton myasthenia syndrome (LEMS),
  • muscular causes include primary inflammatory such as polymyositis,
  • Scleromyositis,
  • isolated inflammatory axial myopathy,
  • primary non-inflammatory conditions (nemaline myopathy, mitochondrial myopathy, and congenital myopathy)
  • isolated neck extensor myopathy (INEM).