-Case Reports-

Internal Carotid Artery Stenosis Due to Atherosclerotic Plaque Damage after Whiplash Injury

Tomonori Tamaki, Norihiro Saito, Yoji Node, Keiko Sawada and Akira Teramoto

Department of Neurosurgery, Nippon Medical School

Blunt traumatic occlusion or stenosis of the internal carotid artery is a rare complication of whiplash injury and may not be recognized until the onset of neurological symptoms. The clinical course can vary considerably, with regard to both the symptoms and the interval between injury and manifestation. A dissecting aneurysm and intimal tear are usually observed after blunt internal carotid artery injury. Atherosclerotic plaque is often observed in the cervical internal carotid artery and carotid bifurcation, but involvement of plaque has been confirmed in relatively few cases of blunt traumatic internal carotid injury. We describe a 58-year-old man who developed cerebral embolism due to intraplaque thrombus after a minor whiplash injury and was successfully treated with carotid endarterectomy. Because thrombosis occurred within the atherosclerotic plaque, we named the mechanism of this case "plaque injury".

J Nippon Med Sch 2006; 73: 154-157

Keywords
atherosclerosis, carotid artery, whiplash injury, cerebral infarction, carotid endarterectomy

Correspondence to
Tomonori Tamaki, Department of Neurosurgery, Tama-Nagayama Hospital, Nippon Medical School, 1-7-1 Nagayama, Tama, Tokyo 206-8512, Japan
tamakito@nms.ac.jp

Received, February 10, 2006
Accepted, March 28, 2006