Normal Anatomy and Variants of Renal Vasculature with Multidetector Computed Tomography in a Tertiary Care Hospital: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

Introduction: Variation in renal vasculature is quite common and has important implication in surgical planning. Computed tomography has high accuracy in evaluation of renal vasculature.  The study was done to estimate the prevalence and pattern of variations of renal vasculature through contrast-enhanced computed tomography in a tertiary care hospital.   Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from 6th April 2016 to 6th April 2017. Ethical approval was taken from Institutional Review Board, Institute of Medicine (reference number 325). Contrast-enhanced computed tomography was performed on 188 patients enrolled through convenient sampling and variations of renal vasculature were evaluated. Data were analyzed based on the types of variations and descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage using  Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 16. Results: Out of the 188 patients, 60 (31.9%) had accessory renal arteries. The most common variant was hilar artery comprising 38 (20.2%) cases whereas polar artery was present in 21(11.1%) cases and the capsular artery was present in one (0.5%) case. Eleven (5.8%) cases had single and five (2.6%) had multiple accessory polar arteries. Single and unilateral hilar artery was present in 28 (14.8%) whereas multiple accessory hilar arteries were present in two (1.1%) cases. Early bifurcation of the renal artery was noted in 15 (7.9%) cases. Double right renal vein was the most common venous variant seen in 12 (6.3%) cases. Retroaortic left renal vein was noted in four (2.1%) cases. Conclusions:  Significant patients undergoing computed tomography examination had renal vascular variations. Therefore, Computed Tomography plays key role as a noninvasive method for anatomic evaluation of renal vascular variants.