Abstract
IntroductionThe commonest variation to the classic anatomic description of renal arterial supply is the presence of accessory renal arteries. The incidence varies widely according to ethnicity. There is no data on the prevalence of these anomalies in persons of Caribbean ethnicity.MethodsAll CT scans done over two years from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2012 were retrospectively evaluated. The anatomy of the renal arterial supply was reported from these studies and the anatomy of accessory renal arteries was documented.ResultsThere were 302 CT scans evaluated and accessory renal arteries were present in 109/302 (36.1%) CT scans, 95% confidence interval 30.6%, 41.4%. There were 71/309 (23.5%) patients with accessory arteries on the left and 54/309 (17.9%) had them on the right (p 0.087). Of these, 16 (14.7%) patients had bilateral accessory renal arteries present. The most common origin for the accessory arteries was the abdominal aorta in 108 (99.1%) cases and in 1 case the accessory artery arose from the coeliac trunk. There were 80 left sided accessory renal arteries: 17 (21.3%) upper polar and 27 (33.8%) lower polar arteries. Of 62 right sided accessory arteries, 14 (22.6%) were upper polar and 26 (42%) were lower polar arteries.ConclusionThis is the first population-based report of anatomic anomalies in renal arterial supply in a Caribbean population. These are important findings that may affect vascular and urologic procedures on persons of Caribbean ethnicity.
Highlights
The commonest variation to the classic anatomic description of renal arterial supply is the presence of accessory renal arteries
There were 302 computer tomography (CT) scans done over the study period that met the inclusion criteria
Accessory renal arteries were commoner on the left, the difference did not attain statistical significance (23.5% vs 17.9%, p = 0.087)
Summary
The commonest variation to the classic anatomic description of renal arterial supply is the presence of accessory renal arteries. A literature review in Medscape, Medline, Pubmed, Embase and Scilo was performed on April 30, 2013 using the keywords: Caribbean, renal, artery, vascular, perfusion, anomaly and variants. This returned two case reports describing the presence of accessory renal arteries encountered during cadaveric dissections for anatomic teaching (Adekunle & Uche-Nwachi 2007; Rao et al 2011). There were no reports of large population-based studies from the Caribbean We carried out this retrospective study to evaluate the incidence and distribution of accessory renal arteries in unselected patients undergoing contrast enhanced computer tomography (CT) scanning of the abdomen at a regional referral centre in the northern Caribbean
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