Morphological analysis of coronary arteries with emphasis on myocardial bridges and triangle of Brocq and Mouchet.

Background: Goals of this study include observing the origin, course, termination, dominance and branching outline of the coro-nary arteries with emphasis on Brocq and Mouchet's triangle. The objectives were to determine the prevalence of Kugel's artery, third coronary artery and myocardial bridges in formalin fixed cadavers of Indian population.

Methods: This cross-sectional anatomical study utilized 30 formalin fixed cadaveric hearts. The length of the trunk is measured for both the right and left coronary arteries with the help of measuring tape and width was determined by using the digital vernier calliper (Mitutoyo Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan).

Results: The 25 hearts (83%) were right dominant, 4 heart specimens (14%) were left dominant and 1 heart specimen (3%) was co-dominant. Kugel's artery was observed in 12 hearts (30%), in this study. The third coronary artery was observed in 4 hearts (14%) of this study. The myocardial bridges were observed in only 4 hearts (7%) of this study. The presence of median artery (one artery) as Brocq and Mouchet's triangle content was observed in 16 specimens (53%), while the 11 specimens (37%) had presence of two arteries (median and diagonal) as its contents, 2 specimens (7%) showed 3 arteries (median, diagonal and one extra artery) as its contents and 1 specimen (3%) didn't have any artery as its content. In the present study, LCA exhibited more variations as in 12 specimens (40%), there was bifur-cation, 9 specimens (30%), there was trifurcation and in 7 specimens (23%), there was tetrafurcation (Fig. 7) and in only 2 specimens (7%), there was pentafurcation of the LCA.

Conclusions: We believe that the present research has provided detailed morphology of the coronary arteries with emphasis on myocardial bridges and Brocq and Mouchet's triangle. However, the data can be still better interpreted with a larger sample size.