Anatomical Relationship Between the Collecting System and the Intrarenal Arteries in the Rabbit: Contribution for an Experimental Model

Abstract

Intrarenal anatomy was studied in detail to evaluate how useful rabbits could be as a urologic model. Only one renal artery was observed, which was divided into dorsal and ventral branches in all cases. Three segmental arteries (cranial, mesorenal and caudal) was the most frequent branching pattern found in both the dorsal and ventral division. There was an important artery related to the ureteropelvic junction in both dorsal and ventral surfaces in all specimens. The cranial pole was supplied by both dorsal and ventral divisions of the renal artery in 23 of 41 casts (56%). Although the cranial pole of the rabbit kidney could be useful as a model because of the resemblances with human kidney, the different relationship between the intrarenal arteries and the kidney collecting system in other regions of the kidney must be taken into consideration by the urologists, when using rabbit kidney in urological research.

Anatomical Relationship Between the Kidney Collecting System and the Intrarenal Arteries in the Sheep: Contribution for a New Urological Model

“…The caudal pole of the sheep kidney was irrigated by interlobar branches from the caudal segmental arteries of the dorsal and ventral primary branches of the renal artery in all cases. This branching pattern related to the caudal pole is similar to findings from dogs (Maques‐Sampaio et al, ) and rabbits (Shalgum et al, ), where the caudal pole is supplied by two caudal segmental arteries, one on the dorsal surface and another on the ventral surface. In pigs (84.62%) and humans (62%), the caudal pole is vascularized by single caudal and inferior segmental arteries, respectively, which divide into ventral (anterior) and dorsal (posterior) branches, sending interlobar branches on both ventral and dorsal surfaces of the caudal pole (Sampaio and Aragão, ; Pereira‐Sampaio et al, ).…”

“…In sheep, a single renal artery was found in all cases, similar to pigs (Pereira‐Sampaio et al, ) and rabbits (Shalgum et al, ), but different from dogs where double (Maques‐Sampaio et al, ) or even triple renal arteries (Jain et al, ) have been reported. This finding is also different from human kidney, where multiple renal arteries are found in 27–30% of cases (Sampaio and Passos, ).…”

“…The renal artery of sheep gives dorsal and ventral primary branches in 100% of the time, similar to dogs (Maques‐Sampaio et al, ) and rabbits (Shalgum et al, ). This primary division of the renal artery is similar to humans (Sampaio and Aragão, ).…”

“…Different from the rabbit kidney, where the number of pelvic recesses in the dorsal surface is greater than in the ventral surface (Shalgum et al, ), the sheep kidney has no difference between the number of recesses on dorsal and ventral surfaces. Because the interlobar arteries pass between the recesses, in the sheep kidney there is no difference between the number of important arteries on the dorsal and ventral surfaces.…”

“…These aforementioned studies demonstrated that the primary division of the renal artery is very important to determine the arterial segmentation of the kidney. Therefore, as the primary division of the renal artery in the sheep kidney, like dogs (Maques- and rabbits (Shalgum et al, 2011), is more like the human kidney (Sampaio et al, 1993) than that of the pig kidney (Pereira- , we suppose that the sheep kidney could be a better model for studies where the arterial segmentation of the kidney is the most important issue. However, our results demonstrated that the caudal segmental artery of both dorsal and ventral branches of the renal artery supplied the entire caudal pole in all cases and also contributed to the dorsal and ventral mid zone in 71% of cases.…”