Type:
Educational Exhibit
Keywords:
Thorax, Anatomy, Veins / Vena cava, CT-Angiography, Catheter venography, MR-Angiography, Education, Normal variants, eLearning, Education and training
Authors:
D. Bulja, S. Beslic; Sarajevo/BA
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-0912
Imaging findings OR Procedure details
From 01.01.2000 until 01.01.2012 at our Radiology Clinic,
a total of 4669 Thorax CT scans were performed.
All patients underwent native CT scanning,
and afterwards suspicion on the abnormality of the thoracic veins was either confirmed or rejected with Contrast enhanced CT (37 patients),
I.V.DSA (5),
or MRI (1).
Venous abnormalities were found in 43 patients out of 4669 examinations (0.92%).
There were 27 male (62.79%),
and 16 female patients (37.21%).
Average age was 47.9 yrs (youngest was 20,
and oldest 87 years).
The most common abnormality was Double Vena Cava Superior which was found in 13 patients (0.28% of all patients scanned).
The second most common abnormality Dilatation of Azygos Vein with Continuation was found in 7 patients (0.15%),
while the third was Pulmonary Varix which was found in 4 patients (0.08%),
followed by other not so frequent abnormalities.
According to the literature,
venous abnormalities in the thorax are quite rare.
In our study abnormalities occurred in 0.92% of cases.
The most common abnormality was double superior vena cava with incidence of 0.26% of scanned patients which is slightly less than other authors have been found (0.3% -0.5%).
Persistent left superior vena cava with the absence of the right was found in 0.04% of patients,
and its frequency in our case is smaller in comparison with other studies.
The next most frequent abnormality in our study was azygos vein dilatation (0.15%) followed by dilated azygos vein continuation (0.06%),
and pulmonary varix (0.09%).
Dilatation of azygos vein was 4 fold rarer in our study in comparison with the study of Parikh et al.
(23)
Two other abnormalities were also detected and they are somewhat rarer in comparison with other authors.
Other abnormalities were in line with the average found by other authors.
It must be noted that very few authors have thoroughly studied the frequency of occurrence of these abnormalities in the population.