Unilateral Aplasia versus Bilateral Aplasia of the Vertebral Artery: A Review of Associated Abnormalities

Abstract

Morphological characteristics of 108 cases of uni- and bilateral aplasia of the vertebral artery (VA) in reports or images of retrospective studies, including one recent case, published between 1967 and 2016 are analyzed. Incidence, gender, persistence of carotid-vertebrobasilar anastomosis (CVBA), associated with other vascular variants, and vascular pathology in each group of uni- and bilateral VA aplasia are mutually compared. Most of the cases of VA aplasia in ages 31 to 80 were discovered in USA, Japan, and India. The bilateral VA aplasia is more common in the male gender than in the female one. The side of the VA aplasia had a significant effect on the side of CVBA persistence. Associated aplasia of other arteries was more common in cases of unilateral VA aplasia. The left VA was more commonly hypoplastic in cases of single right VA aplasia than the right VA in cases of single left VA aplasia. Aneurysms of definitive arteries were more frequent in cases of single right VA aplasia than in cases of single left VA aplasia. We claim that the aplasia of the VA probably depends on genetic factors in some races, while diseases are expressed usually in persons over 30 years of age.

Incidental finding of left vertebral artery agenesis: Case report

“…These studies have found a relationship with the occurrence of the left primitive trigeminal artery and the so-called intermediate communicating artery in cases of left vertebral artery agenesis. Specific symptoms have been associated with this entity, including headache, vertigo and weakness [6] . Aristeidis H et al.…”

Congenital Aplasia of the Common Carotid Artery: A Comprehensive Review

“…ere was no associated pathology in 17.80% of cases; however, there were 21 different pathological states in other cases, and among them the aneurysms of some cerebral arteries in 13.69% [24,31,42,52,53,58,61,62,67,71]. e authors have presented the morphofunctional status of blood vessels and stated the clinical importance in the cases of the absence of the VA [92], or the bilateral ICA [93], and the CCA in this manuscript; the next task will be a comparison of the cases with the le and the ones with the right ICA absence.…”

“…Although a headache was more common among them, it was also an initial symptom in other cases of vascular absence, such as the uni-or bilateral absence of the VA [92], or the bilateral absence of the ICA [93], as well as in many pathological disorders. A suspect pulsatile swelling in the neck caused by the cervical aortic arch, as a reason of/for the discovery of the CCA aplasia [6, 9, 33, 34, 36, 39, 67, 70, 73-75, 77, 81], may not always be related to it, as evidenced by Shepherd et al [37].…”

Apropos of the Simultaneous Absence of Some Embryological Vascular Forerunners and Persistence of Other Ones on the Brain Base in Late Adulthood

“…Arterial abnormalities, such as (total or segmental) aplasia [2][3][4]9], or fenestration [2,5,7,10,11] can be associated with some of the previously mentioned variations. However, both states of arteries could be with [10], or with no cerebral pathology [7,11].…”