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Few patients showed increased risk of injury to vertebral, internal carotid arteries during surgery
Researchers of this observational study that used a retrospective single-institute database found about 1% of patients were at a higher risk for vertebral artery and internal carotid artery injury during anterior surgery and half of these injuries were not detectable by a plain CT.
Researchers included 1,251 patients ranging from 14 years to 93 years of age. In all, 1,054 eligible subjects were included in the final study.
In the entire patient cohort, researchers found 10 patients (1%) had a medial loop of the vertebral artery (VA) and two patients (0.2%) had a medial loop of the internal carotid artery (ICA).
“Preoperative evaluation for vascular anatomy may be advisable, although there are risks associated with such tests too. The risk-benefit analysis of testing all preoperative patients for a condition that only affects 1% of them is beyond the scope of this paper. Cervical surgeons should know the anatomical risk of cervical arteries preoperatively, although the prevalence of this kind of anomalies was only 1%,” the researchers wrote in the study. – by Robert Linnehan
Disclosure: Researchers report JSPS KAKENHI grant number 15K10423 (2015) funds in support of this work.