Central retinal artery: branching patterns on the disc of optic nerve

Vascular pathology of the retina is a common problem among patients with diabetes mellitus, hypertension. There are non-invasive diagnostic methods for retinal examination, which gives an advantage over other research methods. Pathological processes should be differentiated from the normal state of blood vessels without their lesion, so we should understand the pattern and variant anatomy of the vascular bed. The objective was to investigate the nature of the variability of the central retinal artery branching on the disc of optic nerve. We studied 402 images of the ophthalmoscopies from 8 databases that are available on the Internet. It was investigated that central retinal artery goes out to optic disc as one trunk (86.8 %) or two (13.0 %) and three (0.2 %) branches of the first order. One of the most common options is the ramification of two branches of first order – the upper and lower (73.1 %). Three branches were also found: upper, lower, nasal branch – 20.0 %; upper, lower, macular – 3.3 %. Other options were observed, but to a lesser extent. In 1.7 % of cases, four branches ramified from the main trunk: upper, lower, nasal and macular. When describing the variants of artery and vein on optic disc, similar variants of the pattern are observed, which were combined into groups X-shaped pattern of the I (41.3 %), II (7.7 %) and III type (10.2 %), Y-shaped (9.4 %), ζ (dzeta)-shaped pattern I type (8.7 %), ζ (dzeta)-shaped pattern II type (15.0 %) and V-shaped (7.7 %). The classic version can be represented as follows. Most often, the central retinal artery goes to the optic disc as a single trunk. One of the most common options was the ramification of two branches: upper and lower. The most common variant of the pattern of artery and vein at the optic disc was X-shaped pattern of the I type.