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Popliteal Artery & Abberant Tibial Artery

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0:00

In terms of the artery, uh, the popliteal artery, um,

0:05

I'm not gonna go through the anatomy of it.

0:07

Uh, just what we use Mr for in our, uh,

0:11

clinical, uh, practice.

0:13

But, uh, we, just to remind you

0:16

around the knee level itself, that we have several, uh,

0:20

ict, uh, vessels.

0:22

Uh, they're paired, superior, and inferior.

0:26

There's another one in the middle that I'll show you,

0:29

and then below the knee, we will have the trifurcation, uh,

0:34

of the vessel into its smaller branches that go, uh,

0:38

further distally.

0:40

So one of the things we can see related to the, uh,

0:43

popliteal, uh, artery, sorry, I'm just gonna skip that.

0:47

Um, Brady already mentioned this aberrant popliteal artery.

0:52

Here we see another example, uh, the ABT popliteal artery.

0:56

In some articles, it's said to be 2% of the population.

1:00

In other articles, it's quoted higher up to 4%.

1:04

I've, I've read. So in this, what we have is a branch

1:08

that, um, goes anterior, uh, to the, uh,

1:13

popliteal, uh, muscle.

1:15

This is actually a persistence of the fetal circulation.

1:19

So in the fetus, we have this branch normally,

1:23

and in normal maturation,

1:26

a connection forms below the Pope.

1:28

Tears in that segment.

1:29

In Volutes, uh, for some reason in, uh, two to 4% of people,

1:35

they maintain the fetal, uh, circulation.

1:38

Now, the importance of this is that in patients

1:43

who are having surgery in this area, there is some potential

1:48

for injury to the vessel.

1:49

And that has been reported after knee arthroplasties,

1:54

after osteotomies, uh, and even

1:58

after arthroscopy.

1:59

Though I have to tell you, I have never seen an example

2:02

of anybody who sustained an injury

2:04

to an aberrant anterior tibial artery, uh, myself,

2:08

and I'm not aware of one at our institution,

2:11

but it's worth mentioning this, uh, to some, uh, to some,

2:15

uh, case, uh, that has the potential of perhaps going

2:19

to surgery like a total knee, uh, arthroplasty patient.

2:25

So these are the surgeries that have been reported.

2:28

There are isolated case reports as resulting an injury, uh,

2:33

to that, uh, to that artery.

2:34

But again, I, I talked to my surgeon

2:37

and asked him if, uh,

2:38

he'd ever had an injury and he said no.

2:40

So he's done, you know, hundreds of knee arthroplasty.

2:43

So he must have done some patients that had this.

2:46

Maybe he didn't know about it.

2:47

'cause we don't normally do Mr. Imaging, uh, post-op.

Report

Faculty

Donald Resnick, MD

Professor Emeritus, Department of Radiology

University of California, San Diego

Mini N. Pathria, MD, FRCP(C)

Division Chief, Musculoskeletal Imaging

University of California San Diego

Eric Y. Chang, MD

Adjunct Professor, Radiology

University of California, San Diego

Brady K. Huang, MD

Clinical Professor of Radiology

UC San Diego Medical Center

Tags

Musculoskeletal (MSK)

MRI

Knee