Evaluation and prevalance of left atrial diverticle and accessory appendix with cardiac CT

Introduction: We aimed to evaluate to prevalence, radiological features and anatomical location of the left atrial diverticula and left atrial accessory appendage. Subjects and Methods: Totally 1415 patients who underwent cardiac CT between November 2018 and November 2020 at Dicle University Medical Faculty Radiology Department were included in this study. Patients were evaluated for the presence of left atrial diverticulum and accessory appendage.The longest vertical and widest transverse length of each diverticulum were measured. In addition, the locations of the detected accessory appendices were evaluated. The prevalence of both anatomic variations were analyzed in regard to age and gender. Results: In our study the incidence of the left atrial diverticula and left atrial accessory appendage were %16 and %6, respectively. Both of variations were more common in men thanwomen. Left atrial diverticula was mostly presented in cystic form. The most common location for left atrial diverticula and accessory appendage was anterosuperior location. Conclusion: With the increasing use of the cardiac CT, heart anatomy has begun to be studied more detail. Thus the freguency of left atrial diverticulum is observed more frequently than other auricular variations, as we found in our study. Assesment of these variations may guide clinicans prior to RF ablation therapy especially in patients with atrial fibrillation. Keywords:,Left atrial diverticula,Left Atrial Accessory Appendages, cardiac CT, prevalence