I knew that the congenital variation of the human aortic arch, with the left common carotid artery originating from the innominate artery, has nothing to do with the anatomy of the bovine arch; however, it was very useful of Layton et al1 to point out the discordance of the anatomic terminology. The weakness of the article, though, is that the authors did not trace who introduced and coined the term bovine arch. It would be very strange if that person did not know the anatomy of the aortic arch in the cow. Has it ever occurred to the authors that the originator of the term bovine arch did not have anatomy on his mind, but the appearance–head of the cow, 2 horns?
Fig 1.
So-called bovine aortic arch.
Fig 2.
So-called bovine aortic arch.
Fig 3.
So-called bovine aortic arch.
Reference
- 1.Layton KF, Kallmes DF, Cloft HJ, et al. Bovine aortic arch variant in humans: clarification of a common misnomer. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol 2006;27:1541–42 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]