Unilateral two headed plantaris muscle - A rare variation

Julie Christy A, Sathialakshmi

Abstract

Plantaris is a posterior compartment muscle of the leg which takes its origin in from the lateral supra condylar ridge of the Femur. The muscle is located behind the lateral head of Gastroncemius. The plantaris is a vestigial muscle in humans with a short muscle belly and long tendon. It gets itself attached with the medial side of the calcaneum. It takes its origin from a single head in the supra condylar line just medial to lateral head of gastrocnemius. We report a rare variation of unilateral variation of plantaris muscle with two heads. During the routine cadaveric dissection for Undergraduate teaching we observed in a 45-year-old male cadaver plantaris muscle with two heads. The right sided muscle had two heads, one head lying on the supracondylar line above the lateral condyle and second head lying on the oblique popliteal ligament. The muscle has its ligament fused with the tendon of gastrocnemius joins together to form the tendocalcanum. The insertion of plantaris was also noted at the at the point of insertion of Achilles tendon.