Normal variants: Cervical internal carotid loops or coils

Loops or coiling of the upper cervical internal carotid artery is not an infrequent finding. This is a congenital variant and is often asymptomatic. These only become significant when they are associated with actual kinking of the internal carotid artery beyond which there is a post-kink or post-stenotic dilatation and angiographic evidence of retardation of contrast flow. The images below are from two different patients. The second patient had bilateral, almost symmetric, loops in the mid-cervical internal carotid arteries.

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