Anomalous Origin of the Obturator Artery from the Femoral Artery

Abstract

The obturator artery (OBA) most often arises from the anterior division of the internal iliac artery. The typical path of the OBA travels from its origin in the pelvis towards the obturator canal, through which it exits the pelvis and splits into its terminal anterior and posterior branches. In a review of 24 human specimens (average age of 82 years) during routine cadaver dissection performed by undergraduate medical students, one adult male (71 year old) was observed to have an anomalous unilateral branching pattern. An artery branch can be seen arising from the right femoral artery 6 mm inferior to the inguinal ligament, then coursing superiorly deep to the inguinal ligament, into the retroinguinal space (or Bogros' space), where it bifurcates into the inferior epigastric artery (IEA) and OBA. OBA is seen to wrap around the anterior aspect of the pubis to exit through the obturator canal to divide into the terminal branches. This variation of OBA sharing a common trunk with IEA is reported in 4% of cadavers (n=75) in Jakubowicz et al. study and in 2% of the cadavers (n=50) in Mahato's study. The case presented here is an especially remarkable branching pattern due to the complications it could present in endoscopic total extraperitoneal inguinal hernioplasty, laparoscopic herniorrhaphy in the region and during dissection of the retroinguinal space and mesh stapling onto Cooper's ligament.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.