Persistent Left Superior Vena Cava in Pediatric Patients

Abstract

A persistent left superior vena cava (PLSVC) is a congenital anomaly of the systemic venous system. This anomaly is often discovered as an incidental result during central venous catheterization passing through the left subclavian or the left internal jugular vein. We report two cases of PLSVC in pediatric patients.

Persistent left superior vena cava: Review of the literature, clinical implications, and relevance of alterations in thoracic central venous anatomy as pertaining to the general principles of central venous access device placement and venography in cancer patients

“…Those papers in the literature that have specifically addressed the incidental finding of PLSVC at the time of placement of some sort of central venous access device or some sort of central venous monitoring device [38,42,44-123] have generally been directed towards physicians practicing anesthesia [47,48,52,55,58-60,62,64,65,68-71,73,78,85,88,91,92,94,102,117,120,123], critical care [45,46,49-51,53,56,57,72,77,79,83,106,109,110,114,116,119,122], and nephrology [54,66,74,76,80,87,95,96,100,103,104,107,108,113,118]. Despite the fact that a plethora of papers have been published on various aspects of PLSVC and despite there being multiple case reports describing the incidental finding of PLSVC at the time of central venous device placement, there has been very little in the literature specifically directed toward the potential importance of the incidental finding of PLSVC to surgeons, interventional radiologists, and other physicians who are actively involved in central venous access device placement in cancer patients [61,81,82,84,111].…”

Persistence of left superior vena cava: a rare cause of hemodialysis tunneled catheter malposition

“…The most common subtype of persistent left SVC results in the presence of both left and right SVCs 8,9 . More rarely, abnormalities of the embryological development lead to an absent right SVC with persistent left SVC, as previously described in both pediatric and adult patients [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] . In most cases, persistent left SVC drains into the right atrium via the coronary sinus with of no hemodynamic consequence 17 .…”

Congenital Anomalies of Superior Vena Cava and their Implications in Central Venous Catheterization

“…2 and 3). More often, these anomalies are detected incidentally during imaging studies performed for other reasons (13–6, 21). A dilated coronary sinus seen on echocardiography should raise the suspicion of PLSVC (22).…”