Irrigation of equine testis of the English Thoroughbreds

Abstract

The testicular arteries, as well as the number of branches, and the distribution of its penetrating branches were studied in 30 pairs of adult equine testis of the English Thoroughbreds, provided from São Paulo Jockey Club, by using vascular corrosion models after injecting the vinyl acetate into the testicular arteries. In this species, the testicular arteries presented 5 distinct types of vascular arrangements, as follows: the testicular artery splits into a variable number of branches, from 2 to 10 medians, and 3 to 11 lateral branches (35 times - 58.4%); or it splits into 2 to 8 additional rami and at the half the way of its distance; at the free edge of the organ, it divides into two branches, one medial and the other, lateral one (12 times - 20.0%); or divides the organ irrigation into the so called complementary branches, that is, 1 branch (6 times - 10.0%) and 3 branches (1 time - 1.6%); or it gives the medial and lateral branches, with predominance of lateral one (3 times - 5.0%) or medial one (3 times - 5.0%). In respect to the penetrating into their different quadrants, its was observed that the medians, presented in order of their magnitude, the right testicles presented great number of penetrating arteries in the craniomedial (10.5), caudolateral (7.0) and caudomedial (6.5). For the testicles, the craniomedial quadrant was found with the largest number of penetrating arteries, followed by the craniolateral (10.0), and with equivalency to caudomedial and caudolateral (7.,0) quadrants. The anastomoses (8 times - 13.3%) were all found in the ventral face of the organ. By comparing the number of penetrating vessels of the right and left testis, no statistically significant differences were found, in relation to the English equine Thoroughbreds.