Ophthalmic Artery Originating from Basilar Artery: A Rare Variant

Summary: The basilar artery as the origin of the ophthalmic artery is extremely rare. A 48-year-old patient had undergone angiography for suspicion of a right middle cerebral artery aneurysm. No aneurysm was detected. Vertebral artery injec-tions demonstrated the left ophthalmic artery originating from the basilar trunk. Current embryologic theories fall short in explaining this entity. Awareness of neuroanatomic variations is of paramount importance in diagnosis and treat-ment of vascular lesions of the brain. The ophthalmic artery (OA) is the first major branch of the supraclinoid internal carotid artery (ICA) (1). Although rare, middle meningeal artery (MMA) (2, 3), anterior cerebral artery (ACA) (4, 5), and ICA bifurcation (6) have been shown as variants of origin for the OA. The basilar artery (BA) has bee