The red ear syndrome: five new cases Dear Sir We read with great attention the article of Kumar and Swanson (1), which report two new cases of red ear syndrome (RES), since we are very interested in this disorder (2).In the last years we have diagnosed other five patients with this syndrome whose reports we believe can complement the cases published before.We have summarized the clinical and laboratory findings of our cases in Table 1.We would like to emphasize some aspects of our series. First, the motive of consultation was not in any case a reddening of the ear, but facial paralysis (case 1) and headache or facial pain in the remainder. Second, we have observed in addition to the two cases reported by Lance (3) another patient who presented the syndrome associated with a temporomandibular joint dysfunction (case 5).As for the aetiology, besides the case associated with dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint, two others were the result of injury of the upper cervical roots of infectious (virus herpes zoster, case 1) and compressive cause (Chiari I malformation, case 3). In this case, the RES was presumably caused by temporary compression of the cerebellar tonsils during physical activity (sexual); this sensitivity to exercise is consistent with reduced compliance of the subarachnoid space (4).
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