Lateral thoracic artery and subscapular artery variation

Variability in the branching patterns of the arterial tree can have important clinical implications for many specialties. Knowledge of patient-specific arterial anatomy is critical to successfully perform interventions, such as arterial embolization aimed at stopping hemorrhages, successful use of flaps in reconstructive surgeries, selective intra-arterial delivery of chemotherapy agents for treating cancer, and revascularization procedures in acute and chronic arterial occlusions in both peripheral and coronary artery diseases. The constellation of the anomalies has been attributed to the failure of development or growth-arrest of specific vascular sprouting in the upper limb’s main axial vessel in any stage of development, due to mostly ambiguous factors. Anatomy Labs are usually one of the richest resources providing knowledge of vascular variations. We describe a case of arterial variation in the branching pattern of 2nd and 3rd parts of the left axillary artery in an 87-year-old male cadaver, discovered during routine dissection.