Double Superior Vena Cava with a Persistent Left Superior Vena Cava

Persistent Left Superior Vena Cava

Persistent left superior vena cava

Persistent left superior vena cava (PLSVC) is the most common congenital malformation of thoracic venous return and is present in 0.3 to 0.5% of individuals in the general population. This heart specimen was dissected from a 35-year-old male cadaver whose cause of death was determined as non-cardiac. The heart was examined and we found a PLSVC draining into the coronary sinus. The right superio...

A persistent left superior vena cava.

Persistent left superior vena cava is the most common form of anomalous venous drainage involving the superior vena cava, and represents persistence of the left horn of the embryonic sinus venosus, which normally involutes during normal development to become the coronary sinus. Almost always, a persistent left superior vena cava enters the right atrium through the orifice of an enlarged coronar...

Left superior vena cava: revisited.

The persistence of a left-sided superior vena cava is the most common variant of systemic venous drainage. Increased utility of cardiac imaging, in particular cross-sectional techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance (MR), will result in increased detection of the anomaly and its variants. Whilst in the typical form it is often haemodynamically insignificant, its discovery m...

Left Atrial Drainage of a Persistent Left Superior Vena Cava

Although the most common form of the persistent left superior vena cava anomaly is usually clinically silent and often discovered incidentally, the risk of developing cyanosis, heart failure, and embolic cerebrovascular events is high among cases where the anomaly causes a right to left shunt. A rare case of persistent left superior vena cava draining into the left atrium through the superior l...