Efficient harvest of the occipital artery in the retrosigmoid approach: Technical note

The occipital artery (OA) can be used as a donor artery in many types of bypasses; however, harvesting this artery in the depths of its course is challenging. In order to safely harvest the OA, a large hockey-stick-shaped incision is often used, even when only a retrosigmoid approach is needed for the intracranial procedure. In this article, we describe a detailed technique whereby the OA is harvested via a suboccipital subperiosteal-transperiosteal dissection technique. In this technique, the occipital groove is identified via a small linear incision. With the technique described, the OA can be localized and harvested effectively for bypass in the subsequent retrosigmoid approach.