Brachial Plexitis (Parsonage Turner Syndrome, Brachial Neuropathy, Brachial Radiculitis)

Brachial plexitis is a condition characterized by acute onset of shoulder pain followed by weakness and/or sensory loss of the shoulder and/or upper extremity. Dreschfeld first described it in 1887. Multiple reports further described the condition. The most important one out of these was the report of 136 patients by Parsonage and Turner in 1948. It was this report that strongly characterized the clinical history of the condition. Since then, the condition has been known by many different names such as Parsonage-Turner syndrome, neuralgic amyotrophy, acute brachial neuropathy, acute brachial plexitis, idiopathic brachial plexopathy, idiopathic brachial neuritis, paralytic brachial neuritis, and brachial radiculitis, among others.[1][2][3][4]