Abstract
A persistent trigeminal artery is the most common persistent carotid-vertebrobasilar anastomosis, while persistent trigeminal artery variants involve termination at the cerebellar artery without connecting to the basilar artery. Internal carotid artery hyperplasia is also a rare congenital anomaly. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reports of persistent trigeminal artery variant associated with ipsilateral hypoplasia of the internal carotid artery. Herein, we report a case of a 44 year-old woman who visited a neurosurgical clinic because of chronic headaches. Magnetic resonance angiography showed impaired delineation of the left internal carotid artery, and she was referred to our hospital for catheter angiography. Angiogram revealed left internal carotid artery hypoplasia and a left persistent trigeminal artery variant that terminated at the left anterior inferior cerebellar artery. Computed tomography bone images showed a narrow left carotid canal. We diagnosed congenital hypoplasia of the left internal carotid artery concomitant with ipsilateral persistent trigeminal artery variant. Careful imaging assessment is important for identifying persistent trigeminal artery variant when associated with ipsilateral internal carotid artery hypoplasia.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr. Mitsuteru Oikawa (Hiragishi Brain and Nerve Clinic) for his support. We thank Edanz (https://jp.edanz.com/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript.
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W: data analysis, manuscript editing. E: project development, protocol development, data collection, data management, data analysis, manuscript writing, manuscript editing. N: data management, manuscript editing, supervision. Hideki Endo contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Hideki Endo and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Nakamura Memorial Hospital (No. 2022031801).
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Watanabe, D., Endo, H. & Nakamura, H. Persistent trigeminal artery variant associated with ipsilateral hypoplasia of the internal carotid artery. Surg Radiol Anat 44, 947–950 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-022-02964-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-022-02964-1