Rouvière’s sulcus variants from a clinical perspective: A systematic review

doi:10.13105/wjma.123961

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World Journal of Meta-Analysis

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2308-3840

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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA

Observational Study

Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. No commercial re-use. See permissions. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc.

World J Meta-Anal. Sep 18, 2026; 14(3): 123961
Published online Sep 18, 2026. doi: 10.13105/wjma.123961

Rouvière’s sulcus variants from a clinical perspective: A systematic review

Shamir O Cawich, Michael D Kluger, Rahul R Deshpande, Neil W Pearce, Adnan Alseidi, Giovanni Dapri, John N Primrose, Michael T Gardner, Ramnanand S Kedambady, Shaneeta Johnson, D Brock Hewitt, Ammar A Javed

Shamir O Cawich, Shaneeta Johnson, Department of Surgery, Meharry School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37208, United States

Michael D Kluger, Ammar A Javed, Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, United States

Rahul R Deshpande, Department of Surgery, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester M13 9WL, United Kingdom

Neil W Pearce, John N Primrose, Department of Surgery, Southampton General Hospital NHS Trust, Southampton SO16 6YD, United Kingdom

Adnan Alseidi, Department of Surgery and Education, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States

Giovanni Dapri, Department of Surgery, International School Reduced Scar Laparoscopy, Brussels 1050, Belgium

Michael T Gardner, Section of Anatomy, Basic Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies, Kingston 000000, Jamaica

Ramnanand S Kedambady, Section of Anatomy, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies, Kingston KIN7, Jamaica

D Brock Hewitt, Department of Surgery, The NYU Grossman School of Medicine, School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, United States

Author contributions: Cawich SO designed the study; Cawich SO, Kluger MD, Pearce NW, Alseidi A, Johnson S, Gardner MT performed the research; Pearce NW, Primrose JN, Deshpande RR and Dapri G analyzed the data; Cawich SO, Kluger MD, Pearce NW, Gardner MT wrote the paper; Cawich SO, Kluger MD, Hewitt DB, Pearce NW, Gardner MT, Alseidi A, Kedambady RS, Johnson S, Primrose JN, Deshpande RR, Javed AA, Johnson S and Dapri G revised the manuscript for final submission.

AI contribution statement: Artificial Intelligence was not used in any way in the preparation or writing of this manuscript.

Institutional review board statement: This research has been approved by the institutional ethics committee.

Informed consent statement: This study only requires data collection and analysis, and does not include any patient identification information. Therefore, there is no need for a patient consent form.

Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no financial relationships, personal relationships or other scenarios that may represent potential conflicts of interest.

STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement- checklist of items.

Data sharing statement: Not applicable.

Corresponding author: Shamir O Cawich, Department of Surgery, Meharry School of Medicine, 1005 Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, United States. socawich@hotmail.com

Received: June 2, 2026
Revised: June 27, 2026
Accepted: July 29, 2026
Published online: September 18, 2026
Processing time: 101 Days and 15.3 Hours

Core Tip

Core Tip: Even in the year 2026, there is no consensus on a definition nor classification system for Rouvière’s sulcus, despite it being an important surgical landmark. In this systematic review, we used a standardized definition and classification system to extract raw data from 57 articles encompassing 25196 persons and used this to calculate the global prevalence of each variant of Rouvière’s sulcus. These data were compared to the data from a 5-year observational study in our local population. Statistical analyses revealed that the prevalence of Rouvière’s sulcus was significantly greater in the Caribbean population than global prevalence (83.2% vs 76.88%; P = 0.005306). Other unique differences were significantly lower proportions of open-type variants (39.33% vs 56.69%; P < 0001), and greater proportions of slit-type variants (18.26% vs 14.15%; P = 0.033397). These are important differences in the proportion of variants that are of great importance to surgeons practicing in these regions.