A Rare Variation in Facial Artery and Its Implications in Facial Surgery: Case Report

Abstract

Facial artery is usually the main artery supplying the face. It gives three named branches on the face, the inferior labial, the superior labial and the lateral nasal and continues as the angular artery. Face is also supplied by the transverse facial artery and the arteries accompanying the cutaneous nerves. In our present case report, we observed that the lingual and facial arteries were originating from the front of External Carotid artery (ECA) as a common linguofacial trunk on the left side and coursed upwards towards the mandible for about 1.2 cm and then divided into facial and lingual arteries. We observed that the facial artery terminated as Inferior labial artery as end artery (without anastomoses). The other branches for the face namely Superior labial, lateral nasal and angular arteries are arises from the Transverse facial artery. Conclusion: In this study, we noticed that a variation in the morphological aspect of arterial pattern of face, until then not documented. In this sense, the objective of this study was to report a variation of the facial artery and to analyze it relative to the literature state of the art. The present case may provide useful information in different fields of oral and maxillofacial surgery.