Vena Caval Abnormalities Discovered During Dissection in the Anatomy Lab: Two Cadaveric Case Reports
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Intro Congenital abnormalities of the inferior vena cava (IVC) are rare in the general population with the incidence of IVC duplication being between 0.2 – 3%. Persistent left superior vena cava (SVC) has an incidence of 0.3 – 0.7%. It is important to identify such variations through imaging prior to various thoracic and abdominal surgeries to minimize peri‐operative complications. Methods Two cadavers with vena caval abnormalities were identified in a medical school cadaveric anatomy lab. The donor’s age, sex and cause of death were identified through bequeathal services. The pathway of the aberrant structures was identified through dissection and any tributaries along their courses were isolated. Surrounding structures were examined to identify any other concurrent abnormalities. Results We identified two cadavers with vena caval abnormalities. The first case was a 75‐year old female whose cause of death was a bowel obstruction with comorbid dementia. On this cadaver we identified a persistent left SVC that originated from the brachiocephalic vein on the left side that measured 19 mm in diameter. The aberrant structure drained into the right atrium via the coronary sinus, which was noticeably enlarged. The second case was a 76‐year old female whose cause of death was multiorgan failure with comorbid end stage liver failure, pulmonary edema and hypothyroidism. We identified a duplicated IVC with a diameter of 12 mm originating at the left iliac vein and draining into the left renal vein. Along the duplicated IVC were multiple branches originating from the posterior abdominal cavity. Conclusion We present here two cases with rare vena caval abnormalities found in cadavers in our anatomy lab. The embryological origin of a duplicated IVC stems from the persistence of both left and right supracardinal veins during development. A persistent left SVC occurs when the left superior cardinal vein fails to regress inferior to the brachiocephalic vein. Although rare, recognizing these anatomical variations bears clinical relevance, especially in a surgical setting. These abnormalities are important to identify pre‐operatively to avoid unexpected peri‐operative complications.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".