title: Absence of middle hepatic vein combined with retro-aortic left renal vein: a very rare case report.
abstract: The hepatic and renal veins drain into the inferior vena cava. The upper group of hepatic veins consists of three veins which extend to the posterior face of the liver to join the inferior cava. The left renal vein passes anterior to the aorta just below the origin of the superior mesenteric artery. We detected a variation in the hepatic and renal veins in a multislice CT angiogram of a nine-year-old male patient in the Radiology Department of Afyon Kocatepe University Medical School. The upper group hepatic veins normally drains into the inferior vena cava as three separate trunks, namely the right, left and middle. In our case, we found that only the right and left hepatic veins existed and the middle hepatic vein was absent. Furthermore, the left renal vein, which normally passes anterior to the abdominal aorta, was retro-aortic. Left renal vein variations are of great importance in planning retroperitoneal surgery and vascular interventions. Knowledge of a patient's hepatic vein and renovascular anatomy and determining their variations and anomalies are of critical importance to abdominal operations, transplantations and preoperative evaluation of endovascular interventions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey.
authors.forename: Ozan
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Turamanlar
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey.
authors.forename: Oğuz
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kırpıko
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Namik Kemal University, Tekirdağ, Turkey.
authors.forename: Oğuz Aslan
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Ozen
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey.
authors.forename: Bumin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Değirmenci
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey.
authors.forename: Sezer
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Akçer
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Namik Kemal University, Tekirdağ, Turkey.
authors.forename: Ramazan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Uygur
keywords: CT; Variation; left renal vein; middle hepatic vein