We present a 39-year-old patient with massive duodenal bleeding ulcer. The patient had multiple variants in his hepatic arterial anatomy that led us to erroneously embolize the dorsal pancreatic artery presuming it to be the gastroduodenal artery. Due to this erroneous presumption, our patient continued to have upper gastrointestinal bleeding. Repeat angiogram was performed, during which the actual gastroduodenal artery was recognized and embolized. To our knowledge, this rare combination of anatomic variants in the hepatic artery as a pitfall during gastroduodenal artery embolization leading to inadvertent embolization of the dorsal pancreatic artery has not been described in the literature.

Keywords: therapeutic embolization , dorsal pancreatic artery , gastroduodenal artery , complications , duodenal ulcer