Clinically significant neurovascular variations in the axilla and the arm - A case report

Knowledge of neurovascular variations is important for surgeons who remove axillary lymph nodes, to anesthesiologists, and orthopedic surgeons. We found surgically important variations of axillary artery, axillary vein, median, radial and musculocutaneous nerves in the right upper limb of a male cadaver. The axillary artery gave a large abnormal arterial trunk which in turn divided into a common circumflex humeral-subscapular trunk and profunda brachii artery. The abnormal trunk was sandwiched between the two roots of median nerve at its origin. There was an abnormal communicating branch between medial cord and radial nerve. The axillary vein was duplicated in most of its course and was abnormally large in size. In the arm, the musculocutaneous nerve gave three communicating branches to the median nerve. The abnormality reported here might result in neurovascular compression symptoms in the upper limb and might cause confusions in anesthesia and surgery.