Incidental discovery of a new and clinically important anatomic variant of the internal thoracic artery in a young male trauma patient.

The internal thoracic artery (ITA) is the largest thoracic wall artery and is clinically important primarily for use in coronary artery bypass grafting. A number of anatomic variants of the ITA have been reported; however, bilateral, aberrant lateral branches of the ITA never have. The importance of this finding lies in the positioning of the artery at a potential chest tube insertion site. Here, we report the identification, on CT scan, of this rare variation in a young male trauma patient.