Spontaneous Thrombosis of the Internal Carotid Artery in a Seven-Year-Old Child

Spontaneous thrombosis of the internal carotid artery is becoming recognized as one of the major causes of hemiplegia.1,8-14,23While there are many cases of thrombosis of the internal carotid artery secondary to direct trauma to the artery,3,4,6,16,18,20the incidence of spontaneous thrombosis in children without any antecedent trauma or underlying systemic pathology is rare. We have discovered in the literature2,5,7,15,17,18,21eight cases of thrombosis of the internal carotid artery in persons under the age of 20 years, six of which were verified by angiography or autopsy, but only one verified case of spontaneous thrombosis in a child less than 10 years old. This was in a 5-year-old boy reported by Shapiro.21Behrman2reports a case in a 7-year-old boy, but the diagnosis was made only by the presence of diminished pulsation of the carotid artery and was not verified by angiography. Clark and Linell6