During a routine dissection of a cadaver, a circumaortic left renal vein was found ipsilateral to an enlarged adrenal gland. There were two branches draining into the inferior vena-cava, the superior branch entered at the L1 level, and was smaller than the inferior branch which entered at L3. These variations can present medical and surgical issues, and are relatively rare findings, with a meta-analysis plus five other studies putting the incidence of circumaortic renal veins at 2.6%.
