[The clinical anatomy of ophthalmic artery and relative arteries].

OBJECTIVE: To discovery the reason of single eye blind that happened when treating the uncontrolled epistaxis by transarterial embolization method and to provide evidence in vessels morphological to avoid the complication. METHOD: The normal origins and distributions of the ophthalmic artery and the central retinal artery, the abnormal origins and distributions of ophthalmic artery, and the communication of ophthalmic artery and maxillary artery were observed and studied in 100 sides of adult brain specimens. RESULT: 95% of the ophthalmic arteries originated from the supraclinoidal segment of internal carotid artery, and 5% are from middle meningeal artery which was a branch of maxillary artery; 80% of the specimens had communication branches between ophthalmic arteries and middle meningeal arteries. All the central retinal arteries were from ophthalmic arteries. CONCLUSION: One of the two reasons of single eye blinding caused by maxillary artery embolization is the abnormal origins of the ophthalmic artery, and the other reason is that the embolus which passed the communication branch of the middle meningeal artery has embolized the ophthalmic artery or central retinal artery.