Case report
Thrombosed traumatic aneurysm of the occipital artery: a case report and review of the literature
1 Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Texas Children’s Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
2 Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Floating Hospital for Children, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
3 Division of Neuropathology, Texas Children’s Hospital, Department of Pathology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
Journal of Medical Case Reports 2012, 6:203 doi:10.1186/1752-1947-6-203
Published: 17 July 2012Abstract
Introduction
Occipital artery aneurysms are very rare vascular lesions. Most cases reported in the literature have been post-traumatic pseudoaneurysms of the occipital artery.
Case presentation
We report the case of a 14-year-old Caucasian boy presented with a painless non-pulsatile scalp mass that developed rapidly after minor blunt head trauma. The scalp mass was excised six months after the trauma. A pathologic diagnosis of a thrombosed true aneurysm was made. Our patient has had no recurrence of the mass at 15 months follow-up.
Conclusions
We present a case of a true aneurysm of the occipital artery following minor head trauma. We review the literature for similar cases and discuss the difficulty of establishing a diagnosis prior to surgical intervention.
