Aortic arch origin of the vertebral artery may have clinical implications

Abstract

The vertebral artery usually arises from the 1st part of the subclavian artery. Variant origin may include the aortic arch, common, internal or external carotid arteries or a branch of the subclavian artery. Origin from the aortic arch, which is the most common, occurs in up to 22%, but most frequently in 2 – 8% cases (Al – Okaili and Schwartz, 2007; Lale et al., 2014; Yuan, 2016). The prevalence of this variation in African Populations is within the range of those in Indo Asian and Caucasian populations .................................................