Abstract
Carotid-basilar and carotid-vertebral anastomoses are remnants of the early fetal vasculature, in which four paired, presegmental arteries are seen as early as 6 weeks gestational age, when the embryo is 4–5 mm in size. These arteries are the trigeminal, otic, hypoglossal, and proatlantal intersegmental arteries (in order of anterior-posterior or rostral-caudal location, depending on gestational age and named by adjacent structures). As the bilateral, posteriorly located longitudinal neural arteries regress and join together to form the basilar artery, the lack of regression of these presegmental arteries leads to carotid-basilar anastomoses (persistent trigeminal, otic and hypoglossal arteries) or carotid-vertebral anastomoses (persistent proatlantal intersegmental artery). Together, these variants have an overall incidence of about 0.1–1.0 % of the population, although carotid-vertebral anastomoses are much rarer, occurring in less than 0.1 % of the population.
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McKinney, A.M. (2017). Persistent Carotid-Basilar and Carotid-Vertebral Anastomoses. In: Atlas of Normal Imaging Variations of the Brain, Skull, and Craniocervical Vasculature . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39790-0_39
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39790-0_39
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