The First Clinical Case of Repairing Superficial Ulnar Artery Injury

• Published in: Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Vol. 2; no. 2; pp. 49 - 52
• Main Authors: Azuma, Shuchi, Nakamura, Mayu, Sato, Kotaro, Honda, Takayuki, Sakuraba, Minoru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Japan Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 27.04.2023
• Subjects: hand surgery; microsurgery; superficial ulnar artery; variations of the upper limb
• ISSN: 2436-259X; 2436-259X
• DOI: 10.53045/jprs.2021-0020

Superficial ulnar artery is a rare arterial anomaly and is defined as an ulnar artery that courses over superficial forearm flexor muscles. Different from a popular ulnar artery that courses along the ulnar aspect of the forearm deep to the flexor muscles, it is one of many variations in the upper limb and has unilateral predominance. It has been reported that the superficial ulnar artery can coexist with unilateral absent of the palmaris longus muscle. We present a case of the superficial ulnar artery laceration that requires vascular anastomosis under an operative microscope. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first clinical case of recognizing the superficial ulnar artery anomaly and repairing of the vessel. We also visualized the superficial ulnar artery by contrasted computed tomography.