Anatomical variation of the origin of the left vertebral artery

This paper presents and describes the anatomical variation of the left vertebral artery originating from the arch of aorta as a case report. This variation was found in one of the cadavers at the Division of Clinical and Functional Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. During routine dissection of a male cadaver, in the superior mediastinum and the neck we observed an atypical origin of the left vertebral artery. Atypical origin was compared to the typical origin of the left vertebral artery in the anatomical literature. We compared our findings with different possible variations of the origin of the left vertebral artery reported in the literature. The clinical importance of the variation is discussed.