Conservative Management of Unruptured Spontaneous Intracranial Vertebral Artery Dissection

The present study investigated the clinical and morphological characteristics of the vertebrobasilar artery associated with vascular healing in patients with unruptured spontaneous intracranial vertebral artery (VA) dissection (VAD).

We retrospectively reviewed the data from 69 consecutive patients with a diagnosis of unruptured VAD who were treated conservatively for ≥21 days from November 2003 to February 2018 at our institute. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the clinical characteristics and morphological findings of VAD.

Of the 69 patients, vascular normalization of VAD was observed in 26, including a significantly greater proportion of women and nonsmokers (P = 0.04 and P = 0.034, respectively). Patients with normalization of VAD had a significantly lower proportion of posteroinferior cerebellar artery involvement and a smaller vertebral-union-basilar angle of the nondissecting VA, smaller vertebral-union-vertebral angle, distal dissection from the VA union, and less basilar artery bending. Luminal irregularity/steno-occlusion of the VAD on the initial images exhibited vascular resolution/normalization in 25 patients (67.6%) on subsequent images. The morphology of VAD in the dominant or codominant VAs included fusiform/aneurysmal dilatation in 25 patients (78.1%). The morphology in the nondominant VA included luminal irregularity/steno-occlusion in 23 patients (62.2%).

Spontaneous vascular normalization of unruptured spontaneous intracranial VAD might be associated with female sex, nonsmoking, no posteroinferior cerebellar artery involvement, a smaller vertebral-union-basilar angle and vertebral-union-vertebral angle, distal dissection from the VA union, less basilar artery bending, and luminal irregularity/steno-occlusion.