A three-headed plantaris muscle with a bipartite insertion of its two accessory heads

Abstract

The plantaris muscle consists of a small muscular and a long tendinous part and is located at the superficial compartment of the posterior leg. The purpose of the current cadaveric report is to describe a rare variant of the plantaris muscle. During a routine dissection, a three-headed plantaris with two accessory heads was identified with a variant insertion of the two accessory heads. All heads originated from the femur popliteal surface, independently the one from the other. The first head contributed to the long and thin calcaneal tendon, and the two accessory heads were mainly inserted via their musculoaponeurotic expansion into the medial femoral condyle. The plantaris muscle morphological variability has been extensively studied lately. The incidence of the two-headed muscle has been estimated at 1.6%, while the three-headed muscle corresponds to an even rarer variation. This is the third case reported in the English literature, while the insertion of the two accessory heads has never been described before.