Traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage: elastic tissue distribution across the wall of some major cerebral arteries in relation to arterial wall disruption

ABSTRACT

The observed shredding of the vertebro-basilar arterial wall in cases dying of traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage, together with the uneven centrifugal travel of tears across the wall indicate that, arterial wall never blows out like a simple tube of homogeneous structure, and that there might be some mechanical weak points of apparent normal histological structure. In this work, examination of three groups of intact, in-vivo ruptured and in-vitro ruptured vertebral arteries showed that across the wall of the vertebral artery, the elastic fibres are non-uniformly distributed at the tunica media and adventitia. This finding, would result in uneven strain across the wall when become stressed by the water hammer pressure wave to produce such a type of arterial wall disruption at sites of scanty or lacking elastic fibres