Symptomatic Axillary Artery Dissection in a Tennis Player

Acquired anomalies of the upper extremities are relatively rare in young athletes and, as such, are sometimes over-looked as a cause of pain in this patient population. Nev-ertheless, there are specific conditions that cause arterial insufficiency in athletes. Both axillary artery thrombosis secondary to compression by the humeral head and axil-lary artery aneurysm formation with distal embolization have been reported as causes of arm and hand ischemia in athletes. We describe a case of symptomatic dissection of the axillary artery in a tennis player. The dissection re-sulted in a nearly complete occlusion of the axillary artery just distal to the origin of the circumflex humeral vessels. The anatomic location of the dissection suggests a tether-ing effect of the circumflex vessels, which assumes impor-tance in athletic activities characterized by forceful abduc