Technically advanced methods of the surgical treatment of nervous diseases require detailed knowledge of the microanatomy of the base of the brain. An original method of exposing the posterior cranial fossa and extracting the brain from the skull was used at the autopsies of 48 humans and yielded data on the microanatomical features in the zone at which the root of the trigeminal nerve enters the brainstem. Three variants of the arterial blood supply to the root of the trigeminal nerve and three variants of the venous drainage from the cerebellopontine angle were identified. This method of exposing the posterior cranial fossa at autopsy identified the topographical anatomical interactions between the root of the trigeminal nerve and the vessels of the base of the brain present while the patients were alive. Consideration of structural variants of the superior petrosal vein during surgical approaches to brainstem structures should allow the incidence of complications to be decreased.
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Translated from Morfologiya, Vol. 137, No. 1, pp. 17–21, January–February, 2010.
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Ustyuzhantsev, N.E., Chetvertnykh, V.A. & Balandina, I.A. The Vascular Network at the Site of Entry of the Trigeminal Nerve into the Brainstem. Neurosci Behav Physi 41, 13–17 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-010-9370-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11055-010-9370-9