Conflict of Interest: None declared SUMMARY

Thoracic kidney is a rare type of renal ectopia. Patients with thoracic kidneys are usually asymptomatic and the condition is usually discovered incidentally during ra-diological evaluation for other conditions or during thoracic surgery. An intravenous urography done for a thirty-eight year old man referred on account of a seemingly small right kidney on an abdominal ultra-sound scan, showed a normal right kidney and a left thoracic kidney. Thoracic kidney is a rare but an im-portant cause of a thoracic ‘mass ’ or ‘elevated hemi diaphragm’. It should be considered in the evaluation of such patients to prevent unnecessary surgical inter-ventions and image guided biopsies