Objective: To explore the rules of the anatomic morphology between vertebral artery tortuosity and transverse foramen.
Methods: From January 2012 to December 2015, 60 patients with vertebral artery tortuosity by means of analyzing the image data and basic clinic information as the observation group, and 50 patients randomly selected exclusive of vertebral artery tortuosity, absence of vertebral artery, vertebral artery aneurysm, cervical decomposition incomplete deformity and oral cavity prosthesis artifacts as the control group, the basic clinical information was collected; the transverse foramen area (TF) and vertebral artery cross-sectional area (VA) of the vertebral artery were measured in the observation group and the control group; internal diameter of vertebral artery tortuosity, length of vertebral artery were measured and; twisting coefficient (s)of the vertebral artery was calculated.Then the difference of the above-mentioned statistics was acquired.
Results: The C4 TF (25.91±10.13) mm and C6 TF(31.93±17.91) mm of the affected segment of the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group[(22.11±8.67) mm, (27.19±7.89) mm] (P<0.05); VA and TF were positively correlated.The average age[(68.25±12.03) years], blood pressure (45 cases)of the observation group and the proportion of the menopausal women (39 cases)were higher than those in the control group[(61.32±11.32) years, 23/22](P<0.05).
Conclusions: The area of transverse foramen of C4 and C6 could be affected by vertebral artery tortuosity. It might be related to the occurrence of bone degeneration around C6 and C4.The risk factors of the expansion of the transverse foramen might be advanced age, hypertension and menopausal women.