Platybasia associated with an unusual case of pulmonary tuberculosis; report of a case with necropsy.

Chamberlain’s paper in 1939 on “Basilar impression (platybasia)” has stimulated the interest of the medical profession in the study of malformation of the base of the skull and upper cervical spine, an anomaly up to that time receiving very little attention. In this paper he proposed a criterion for the diagnosis of platybasia based on the amount of projection of the odontoid process above a line drawn on a conventional lateral x-ray film of the skull connecting the posterior edge of the hard palate to the dorsal margin of the foramen magnum; the line now being referred to as “Chamberlain’s line.” Two cases in Chamberlain’s’ series were treated by low occipital cranlectomy and laminectomy of cervical segments with definite subjective and clinical improvement of their neurological symptoms. According to Schueller,3 on the other hand, the diagnostic features of platybasla are the cephalad bulging of the floor of the posterior cranial fossa around the foramen magnum and the congenital variations of the upper cervical vertebrae. -The case described in this paper is a bizarre one, not only because of the presence of the developmental anomaly of the occipital bone and upper cervical portion of the spinal column, but also in the clinical course of the pulmonary tuberculous disease with its unusual concomitant complications.