Three headed biceps brachii

21st National Anatomy Congress, Ankara, Turkey, 27 - 29 November 2020, vol.14, pp.65, (Summary Text)

Objective: Musculus biceps brachii is one of the muscles that

shows frequent variations. Most common variation is that it has

extra heads. The most common of these variations is the three-

headed musculus biceps brachii. To the best of our knowledge,

a literature review has not been conducted for the years

1880–2020 on the triple-headed musculus biceps brachii.

Another issue that draws our attention is that a common classi-

fication is not used in case reports. With this study, we aim to

contribute to the literature on the two issues mentioned above.

Methods: Pubmed search engine was used to collect data in our

study. More than two hundred articles were searched by enter-

ing the keywords: three headed biceps brachii, third head of

biceps brachii, atypical biceps brachii, supernumerary head of

the biceps brachii and accessory head of biceps brachii into the

pubmed search engine. Among these articles, those that are only

in summary, male / female, right / left extremity, origo / inser-

tio data missing or not specified and those not suitable for the

topic of three-headed biceps brachii were not included in the

study. During the classification of the origin of the third head of

musculus biceps brachii, the method of Marc Rodriguez-

Niedenführ and colleagues was applied.

Results: Three-headed musculus biceps brachii was seen with a

rate of 78.6% in men and 21.4% in women. When all the right

and left extremities were evaluated, 70.5% infero-medial and

29.4% superior humeral head were detected. No infero-lateral

humeral head was found. No statistical significance was found

between origo’s being in the infero-medial or superior humeral

region and gender (p=0.196 for the right upper extremity;

p=0.077 for the left upper limb). In addition, when articles men-

tioning nervus musculocutaneus were examined, it was men-

tioned that the nervus musculocutaneus was absent, duplicated,

not piercing musculus coracobrachialis and frequently exhibit-

ing a connecting branch.

Conclusion: Having a third head of musculus biceps brachii

can cause shoulder pain, nerve and vascular entrapment, and /

or variations. May cause confusion in surgical procedures per-

formed in the shoulder area. We think that our research will

increase awareness about the frequency of the third head of

musculus biceps brachii.

Keywords: musculocutaneous nerve, variation, biceps brachii,

third head