Anatomical Variations of Renal Artery and Its Surgical Correlations: A Cadaveric Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND Kidneys are retroperitoneal organs normally supplied by the paired renal arteries. Each kidney is supplied by a single renal artery which arises as a lateral branch of abdominal aorta, between the levels of L1 and L2. Morphological variations of renal artery include variations in their number and unusual branches. Most of these variations remained unknown until being discovered during any surgical procedure or found during autopsy. We wanted to determine prevalence of multiple renal arteries in Kolhapur population and to provide their surgical correlation. METHODS Formalin embalmed 50 cadavers constituted the material for study. During routine abdominal dissection conducted for medical undergraduates in the Department of Anatomy, kidneys along with their arteries were explored and the morphological variations of renal arteries were noted. RESULTS We observed multiple renal artery variations in 32 cadavers including duplicate renal arteries, triplicate renal arteries, prehilar multiple branching, superior polar and inferior polar artery. CONCLUSIONS Awareness of variations of renal artery is necessary for surgical management during renal transplantation, repair of abdominal aorta aneurysm, urological procedures and for angiographic interventions.