Reply to N. Eid et al.

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1. Kajiyama Y, Iwanuma Y, Tomita N, Amano T, Isayama F, Saita M, Ozaki A, Shibamoto M, Kitano H, Uchida T. Relational topographical anatomy between right bronchial artery and thoracic duct. Esophagus. 2014. doi:10.1007/s10388-014-0450-8. 2. Eid N, Otsuki Y. Anomalous bronchial arteries with surgically important relationships to abnormal recurrent laryngeal nerve and thoracic duct. Clin Anat. 2010;23:897–8. 3. Eid N, Ito Y, Otsuki Y. Thoracic duct relationships to abnormal neurovascular structures in cervicothoracic regions: case study and clinical relevance. Surg Radiol Anat. 2013;35:969–72. It is our pleasure to respond to the letter written with regard to our recently published article [1]. First, Eid asked Figure 1 in our article. In this figure, we wanted to present normal relational anatomy between right bronchial artery and 3rd intercostal artery, and did not present thoracic duct clearly. Eid referred to their two case reports published in 2010 and 2013 [2, 3]. In those reports, Eid also mentioned relationship between anomalous common bronchial artery trunk and thoracic duct. However, “anomalous common bronchial artery trunk” in Eid’s papers is quite different from “anomalous right bronchial artery” in our article. In Eid’s articles, “anomalous common bronchial artery trunk” arose from higher level of descending aorta than usual and ran anterior side of right main bronchus. On the contrary, “anomalous right bronchial artery” in our article originated from usual level of descending aorta and ran posterior side of right main bronchus. We just used the word “anomalous” as a meaning that “without connection to 3rd intercostal artery”.