A rare case of combined abnormalities of renal and testicular vessels

In clinical practice, pre-operative radiological assessment of gonadal and renal vessels is important in planning alternative surgical procedures related to the urogenital structures and/or the great vessels of the abdomen. Failure to identify critical vascular variations may be considered a technical error, resulting in inadvertent surgical injuries that may result in ethical and medico-legal litigation. One such variation was encountered in a male plastinated cadaver during routine undergraduate teaching that showed an abnormal origin, course and relation of the left testicular artery from an accessory renal artery on the same side, and a duplicated right testicular artery with a retrocaval course. The purpose of this report is to discuss the possible embryological reasons for the combined vascular variants that were found as well as any possible clinical implications