Abstract
A 78-year-old woman was seen at the hospital because of an abnormal shadow on a chest x-ray film. The chest x-ray film which was taken for a purpose of preoperative examination for early gastric cancer disclosed an abnormal shadow in the left lung. Following close exploration, adenocarcinoma of the left lower lobe of lung (cT1bN0M0, stage IA) was diagnosed and complete video-assisted left lower lobectomy (ND2a-1) was performed. During the surgery, we identified an abnormal branching of the left pulmonary artery which descended between the superior pulmonary vein and the upper bronchus to the lower lobe. We cut it after double ligature. Postoperative imaging examination confirmed that the basal pulmonary artery (A9) branched from the left main pulmonary artery as the first branch. It is a very rare abnormal from of branching that the left basal pulmonary artery has branched from the left main pulmonary artery, and this is the fourth case report in Japan as far as we could review.
