The cerebral arterial circle (circulus arteriosus cerebri)

Shahab Kamali Ardakani, Majid Dadmehr, Farideh Nejat*, Saeed Ansari, Behzad Eftekhar, Parvin Tajik, Mostafa El Khashab, Shahrooz Yazdani, Mohammad Ghodsi, Fatemeh Mahjoub, Maryam Monajemzadeh, Bashir Nazparvar, Afshin Abdi-Rad

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: Many studies have investigated the variations in the anatomy of each segment of the cerebral arterial circle while a few have addressed the variations of the cerebral arterial circle as a whole. Methods: Thirty brains of recently deceased Iranian infants and fetuses were dissected. The dissection process was filmed and digitized so as to be readily available for further studies. The variations of the circle as a whole and segmental variations were evaluated. Results: Variants with uni- and bilateral hypoplasia of posterior communicating arteries (PcoAs) were the most common in our study, similar to previous works. No aplasia of the precommunicating part of the anterior cerebral artery (A1), the precommunicating part of the posterior cerebral artery (P1) and anterior communicating artery was seen. Hypoplasia of the right and left PcoA was observed in 8 and 5 cases, respectively. Aplasia of the right PcoA was found in 16.6% and of the left PcoA in 3.3%. Conclusion: In this study, we confirmed the previously described finding that the symmetrical, circular configuration of the circulus arteriosus cerebri is present in only about 42.1%. The main differences between the fetal and adult disposition are the diameter of the PcoA and the circular part of the posterior cerebral artery. According to previous studies, the fetal brain older than 4 months has anatomical characteristics very similar to the adult's circle; our finding was mostly similar to adult samples as most samples were from infants, not fetuses. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)388-392
Number of pages5
JournalPediatric Neurosurgery
Volume44
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2008
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • circle of Willis
  • hypoplasia
  • aplasia
  • MICROSURGICAL ANATOMY
  • RECURRENT ARTERY
  • WILLIS
  • BRAIN
  • FETAL

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