[A young adult case of spontaneous basilar artery dissection].

We reported a case of basilar artery dissection in a 20-year-old man suffering sudden onset of consciousness disturbance. Brain CT revealed a cerebral infarction of the whole territories of vertebro-basilar artery and his 3DCT showed the occlusion at the base of basilar artery. Autopsy revealed that the subintimal dissection was found at the base of basilar artery and the dissection was spreaded to the distal of bilateral posterior cerebral arteries. The characteristics of his vertebro-basilar artery were small in diameter, thin media and thickened intima. According to these findings, we supposed this rare case of basilar dissection occurred all at once based on a functional abnormality in his small vertebro-basilar arterial wall.