Bilateral Vertebral Artery Occlusion After Cervical Spine Fracture Dislocation.

BACKGROUND

Vertebral artery injury is known to potentially occur in conjunction with blunt cervical spine trauma. Rarely, these injuries present bilaterally as complete occlusions. Twelve cases of bilateral vertebral artery occlusions after closed cervical spine trauma have been described in the reported data, nearly all of which demonstrated signs and symptoms of vertebrobasilar insufficiency and ischemia.

CASE DESCRIPTION: Our patient presented after a traumatic C5-C6 flexion-distraction injury that had resulted in bilateral locked facets and spinal cord injury and bilateral vertebral artery occlusions at the V1 segment. However, our patient did not show any cranial symptoms despite his neurovascular injury.

CONCLUSIONS

We present our patient's case as a rare illustration of a bilateral vertebral artery occlusion after blunt cervical spine trauma without clinical vertebrobasilar ischemic sequelae.