Lévitations du membre supérieur : quatre formes cliniques et de nombreuses étiologies

Arm levitation, as defined as a spontaneous elevation of one upper limb above rest position, has been described in several diseases, including progressive supranuclear palsy, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, cortico-basal degeneration, Huntington's disease and various types of stroke. According to an analysis of the published literature, we assume that this term progressively encompasses different movement disorders whose pathophysiologies should be clearly differentiated. Based on a small case series, this paper is an attempt to delineate four different types of arm levitation, based on both clinical and etiological backgrounds. We distinguished respectively ataxic levitation, dystonic levitation, alien levitation and synkinetic levitation, based on clinical, pathophysiological and etiological considerations.