Indian Journal of Clinical Anatomy and Physiology 2023;10(3):195–196 Content available at: https://www.ipinnovative.com/open-access-journals Indian Journal of Clinical Anatomy and Physiology Journal homepage: https://www.ijcap.org/ Short Communication Demystifying anatomical variations- Education and clinical perspectives Vivek Mishra 1, *, Mrinal Barua 2 , Shelja Sharma 1 , Prerna Chandra 1 1 Dept. of Anatomy, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India 2 Dept. of Anatomy, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 26-08-2023 Accepted 05-09-2023 Available online 21-10-2023 Keywords: Anatomical variations Anomalies Gross anatomy Clinical practice ABSTRACT The plethora of anatomical variations in scientific literature has made it very difficult for health care professionals like surgeons and interventionists to remember anatomical variations during the procedure and there are high chances that the variations they are going to find during a procedure will always be different from the one that is already reported in some or the other way. Finding similarities and dissimilarities with previously reported versions of variations entirely depends on experience and education of interventionists. The continuous addition of variations on one side adding to our existing scientific knowledge but on other side It is almost impractical and herculean task to remember all variations and continuous addition making it more difficult to distinguish the significant from not so significant facts and apply these facts in clinical practice. Evidence based Anatomy can do justice to this situation but robust studies related to anatomical variations are still lacking as we have plenty of case reports related to anatomical variations having many scientific flaws. As an academic exercise reporting anatomical variations may be fine but in the real world such things cause confusion and affect decision-making. We must try and learn to draw a line and avoid adding gibberish to scientific literature as an extension of our professed moral duty towards science. This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. For reprints contact: reprint@ipinnovative.com 1. Introduction Anatomical variation is a presentation of body structure with morphological features different from those described in several anatomy textbooks as Normal. 1 Anatomical variation is a divergence from what is generally perceived as “normal anatomy” and that may or may not be related to a disease state. “Normal” may have many meanings depending on the context in which the term is used. In context of human gross anatomy, whatever is written in the book “Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice” is assumed to be normal by most people. Anatomical variations includes any variation in muscle structure, origin/insertions and innervation, * Corresponding author. E-mail address: vivmishraek@gmail.com (V. Mishra). ligament attachments and morphology, branching patterns of blood vessel , nerves and their course and positions, and bone morphology and accessory bones, various foramen/foramina etc. which are frequently documented by anatomists during their routine dissection or clinicians during surgeries. As a fact No two humans can be exactly similar externally and internally. 2 It is altogether a different matter whether such differences are ‘significant’ in terms of healthcare or not. A study found that experienced clinicians reported seeing variations in their practice on a monthly (39%), weekly (25%), and daily (21%) basis. 3 Reporting of anatomical variations from all over the world has become so extensive. In current era of preponderance of journals and injudicious race of publishing articles, we are adding anatomical variations irrespective of their significance or https://doi.org/10.18231/j.ijcap.2023.044 2394-2118/© 2023 Author(s), Published by Innovative Publication. 195