Popliteal Artery Entrapment Syndrome

Intermittent claudication at an early age in patients with an otherwise normal vascular system may be due to an anomalous course of the popliteal artery. The condition is probably more frequent than indicated by the reporting of only 17 cases in the literature. We have seen two more patients with this syndrome. Diagnosis was made preoperatively in each of the young men. In neither was the anomaly present on the contralateral side. Both patients were successfully treated by dividing the medial head of the gastrocnemius, rerouting the popliteal artery, and performing thromboendarterectomy on the occluded vessel.