Unilateral Hypoplasia of the Internal Carotid Artery
Lale Paşaoğlu
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Uğur Toprak *
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Betul Akdal
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Gokhan Yagiz
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Dilek Acar
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
Fatih Gurel
Department of Radiology, Ankara Numune Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Hypoplasia of the internal carotid artery (ICA) is a rare congenital anomaly. Most of the patients are asymptomatic. When clinically symptomatic it presents as cerebral ischemia or hemorrhage. Carotid artery hypoplasia should not be confused with other conditions which may have a similar appearance such as arterial dissection, atherosclerosis, vasculitis and tubular fibromuscular hyperplasia. Hypoplasia of the ICA is usually discovered incidentally by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging. We report three cases of ICA hypoplasia which were discovered incidentally on computed tomography angiography (CTA). One of the three patients described an ipsilateral amaurosis fugax associated with the hypoplasia of the right internal carotid artery.
Keywords: Aneurysm, hypoplasia, internal carotid artery, multidedector computed tomography.