History of Spontaneous Dissection of the Cervical Carotid Artery

J ean Fernelius (Fernel), a French mathematician, astronomer, and physician, probably reported the earliest description of a patient with a dissection of the aorta in 1542. Although many clinical syndromes related to vascular lesions were described in the 19th and early 20th centuries, dissection of the carotid arteries was not documented until the mid 1900s. The first aortic dissections extending into the internal carotid artery were described by Shennan in 1934. Dratz and Woodhall published the first description of a patient with traumatic dissection of the internal carotid artery in 1947. Two further cases of traumatic internal carotid artery dissection due to cranial extension of common carotid artery dissection, a well-known complication of carotid puncture during cerebral angiography, were reported in 1954.