Preservation of an intra-pancreatic hepatic artery during duodenopancreatectomy for melanoma metastasis.

We describe the case of a hepatic artery originating from a hepato-mesenteric trunk and traveling through the head of the pancreas, found preoperatively in a 44-year-old woman presenting two metachrone intra-pancreatic metastasis of a skin melanoma. Few cases with this anatomic variation have been found in the published literature consulted and this is the first case of duodenopancreatectomy for melanoma metastasis associated with this anatomic variant. In this patient, multidetector CT image with angiography and 3-D reconstruction demonstrated that the common hepatic artery arose from the superior mesenteric artery without any other arterial supply to the liver.