Morphological characteristics of the aortic arch organization

Abstract Our study was performed on 228 cases by dissection, by plastic injection followed by corrosion or dissection and by simple and CT angiography study. Each morphological aspect was assessed on a different numbers of cases, as long as the same case could not provide data on all studied elements. We assessed: the number of branches that originate from the aortic arch, the level of origin and the morphological type of the aortic arch. In terms of number of branches emerging from the aortic arch, most commonly are three branches, in 48.48% of cases, describing them 3 variations: separation of the three classical branches in 45,96% of cases, in 1.51% of cases the left common carotid artery emerged from the brachiocephalic trunk while the other two branches being represented by a vertebral artery and the left subclavian and in 1.01% by the right subclavian artery with retroesophageal traject, by a bicarotid arterial trunk and the left subclavian artery. In 28.70% of the cases were four branches, as follows: in 13.13% of cases the fourth branch was represented by the left vertebral artery, in 7.07% of cases there was the inferior thyroid artery, in 4.04% of cases the brachiocephalic arterial trunk was missing and the right subclavian artery originate from the aortic arch and presented a retroesophageal traject, in 3.03% of cases the fourth artery was the ascending cervical and in 1.51% of cases all four arteries had their origins in the aortic arch with no brachiocephalic trunk. In 22.73% of cases from the aortic arch originated only two branches: in 19.70% of cases the left common carotid originated in the brachiocephalic trunk, so the second branch was the left subclavian and in 3.03% of the cases there were two brachiocephalic trunks. Regarding the level of origin from the aortic arch, we found that only the brachiocephalic arterial trunk showed versions of origin: in 64 61% of the cases the brachiocephalic trunk had its origin in the horizontal segment of the aortic arch, in 21.54% of cases the origin was located at the limit

between the ascending and horizontal segments and vin 12.31% of cases the origin was from the ascending segment of the aortic arch. In only 1.54% of the cases the left subclavian artery originated from the descending segment of the aortic arch