A CLINICALLY RELEVANT VARIANT OF THE ARTE RIA-THYROIDEA SUPERIOR

Usually the superior thyroid artery is a branch of the external caroti d artery. During a functional neck dissection in order to remove a met astasis of a tongue cancer we observed a variation of the origin of th e vessel that was interesting from the surgeon's point of view. The ar tery rose from the A. carotis communis 3.5 cm below the bifurcation of the common carotid artery. Normally in this region no vessels leave t he common carotid artery and therefore the knowledge of such variation s is important for the exact identification of the neck vessels during surgery to avoid a fatal mix-up with the internal carotid artery.