Thrombosed traumatic aneurysm of the occipital artery: a case report and review of the literature.
BACKGROUND
Occipital artery aneurysms are very rare vascular lesions. Most cases reported in the literature have been post-traumatic pseudoaneurysms of the occipital artery.


METHODS
We report the case of a 14-year-old Caucasian boy presented with a painless non-pulsatile scalp mass that developed rapidly after minor blunt head trauma. The scalp mass was excised six months after the trauma. A pathologic diagnosis of a thrombosed true aneurysm was made. Our patient has had no recurrence of the mass at 15 months follow-up.


CONCLUSIONS
We present a case of a true aneurysm of the occipital artery following minor head trauma. We review the literature for similar cases and discuss the difficulty of establishing a diagnosis prior to surgical intervention.
Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Texas Children's Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. ajea@bcm.edu.
Vikas Y
VY
Rao
Steven W
SW
Hwang
Adekunle M
AM
Adesina
Andrew
A
Jea