The Presence of a Variant Obturator Artery: The Corona Mortis

INTRODUCTION The obturator artery (OA) is a vessel of variable origin with anterior‐lateral direction on the wall of the pelvis. It is followed by the obturator vein and nerve leaving the pelvis through the obturator canal 1 . This vessel is often a branch of the internal iliac artery, however, it is subject to important anatomical and surgical variations 2,3 . The most important variation is referred to corona mortis 4 (Crown of Death). The aim of this study is to verify and quantify the OA different origins and to determine the presence of conora mortis . METHOD Forty cadavers of Brazilian decent (27males and 13 females) were dissected in order to observe the presence or absence of anatomical variations of OA. The study was conducted in the Laboratory of Anatomy of the Estácio de Sá University (Joao Uchoa Campus), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The data analysis was conducted using SPSS software. RESULTS The corona mortis (Figures 1 and 2) was found in 22.5% of subjects (55,6% Males and 44,4% females) (Tables 1 and 2). The external iliac artery had a common trunk that originated the obturator and inferior epigastric arteries. DISCUSSION The presence of the corona mortis is very relevant for surgery because it is a common variation of the obturator artery. The knowledge of this variation is important because of the possibility of injury during surgical interventions especially when staples are used for endoscopic repair of inguinal and femoral hernias 2,3,4,5,6 . CONCLUSION The presence of corona mortis variation was significant, demonstrating that the knowledge of this variation, is important to surgery. Support or Funding Information Own financing and support from Estácio de Sá University This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .