Vertebral artery dissection following a posterior cervical foraminotomy with rhizolysis of the subaxial spine has not been described before. A 46-year-old lady underwent the procedure for a left C6 radiculopathy with a focal disc herniation with no intraoperative complications. Seven hours post-operatively, she developed a right homonymous hemianopia, thalamic dysphasia, gait and memory impairm...

A 62-year-old man was admitted to our hospital with a brain infarction in the right medulla. On the first day, he was diagnosed with a vertebral artery dissection, based on the findings from conventional angiography, which showed an irregular stenosis associated with a pseudoaneurysm of the right vertebral artery (Picture 1). This finding on classical angiography is called the pearl and string ...

Correspondence: HG, e-mail: . Received 30 October 2009 and revised version accepted 15 July 2010. Competing interests: none declared. CT angiogram showed eccentric contrast in the left vertebral artery from just after its origin to the level of the C4 vertebral body suggestive of dissection (Figure 2). He was anticoagulated with enoxeparin. He walked independently when he l...

BACKGROUND Vertebral artery disease may give rise to lower motor neuron deficits, but the pathogenesis is unknown. I describe a man with a right vertebral artery dissection who developed bilateral distal upper extremity amyotrophy. He had symmetrical bilateral focal hyperintensites of the anterior cervical spinal cord on magnetic resonance imaging, compatible with watershed infarction. CASE D...

The purpose of this report is to discuss the value of ultrasonographic examination in the diagnosis and follow-up evaluation of vertebral artery dissection. We collected data on 8 patients with 11 pathologic vessels: 9 were affected intracranially and 6 were affected extracranially. Four vessels were affected in both intracranial and extracranial segments. Extracranial color-flow duplex sonogra...

Traumatic intracranial vertebral artery injury is a relatively rare but potentially fatal disease. We present a case of a 63-year-old man who presented with sudden onset of loss of consciousness after hitting his head. After immediate resuscitation, he showed quadriplegia and absence of spontaneous breathing. Brain and cervical spine magnetic resonance imaging revealed an atlantoaxial subluxati...