Artère vertébrothyroïdienne aberrante

Radiological documents are lacking for many descriptions of variants of vertebral and inferior thyroid arteries reported in the anatomic literature. We report two simultaneous variants, discovered incidentally during a catheterization procedure of the left vertebral artery in a patient admitted for arteriovenous malformation. The vertebral and inferior thyroid arteries arose from a common trunk, issuing directly from the aortic arch. Ipsilateral cervical arteries arose from the subclavian artery that gave no thyroid branch. This aspect was also well documented by Doppler ultrasound. We give an embryological analysis, which would explain these variants by lack of involution of specific arterial segments. More recently, multidetector CT has been found to be helpful in facilitating detection and study of vascular variants.