Giant pericallosal artery aneurysm – Literature review and report of a rare case

Abstract

Giant pericallosal artery aneurysms are extremely rare. Aneurismatic lesions involving this artery are usually small, tend to early bleeding and might be associated with other lesions. Differential diagnosis of giant aneurysms are not easy and includes tumoral, infectious and vascular mass effect lesions. We report a case of a giant and partially thrombosed left pericallosal artery aneurysm. A 58-year-old man, presented with progressive headaches, seizures and speech alterations initially misdiagnosed as a falx cerebri meningioma. As clinical status continue to worsen, magnetic resonance imaging and digital cerebral angiography were performed and a vascular etiology was considered. The patient was then referred to our hospital for surgical treatment. The peculiarity of this case concerns the difficulty of surgical treatment once the surgeon was not able to obtain control of the afferent artery and the aneurysm neck could not be visualized. Also, the aneurysm adhered to the medial surfaces of the frontal lobes and covered the anterior cerebral arteries. Treatment by means of microsurgical thrombectomy, clipping and resection of the lesion was successfully performed. Microsurgical treatment may provide good results when carefully planned with the help of imaging studies of the lesion. It is essential to keep in mind that flexible approach is of great importance when dealing with giant aneurysmatic lesions of pericallosal artery due to its variety of intraoperative presentation.

Keywords

• intracranial aneurysm
• corpus callosum
• cerebral arteries