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My name is Tom Cosker,
and I'm the Director of Human Anatomy for the University of Oxford,
but I'm also an orthopaedic surgeon at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre,
which is also based in Oxford, where I'm a specialist sarcoma surgeon.
This gives me a perhaps unique insight into
the importance and function of the musculoskeletal system, in that,
when people develop sarcoma,
which can be anywhere in the human body,
I have to have a sound
and detailed understanding of the underlying anatomy,
so that I can operate on them safely and remove the tumour accordingly.
I hope that you'll be able to follow me in this introduction to
the skeletal system and understand some of the important constituent structures.
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So in this lecture,
we'll be looking at the components of the skeletal system, and in particular,
thinking about the different parts of the skeleton,
which are called the axial and appendicular skeleton;
the functions of the skeletal system and how that helps support us and provide
locomotion amongst other functions; to think about structure of long bones;
to look at the structure which is known as cartilage which lines our joints;
to think about different types of joints;
how bone develops and the important cellular components of bone,
which comprise the final structure.
Starting with the components of the skeletal system.
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The skeletal system is the internal framework of the body.
This is comprised of the bones and
supportive connective tissue such as cartilage and ligaments.
So if we look at the picture on the slide,
we can see here how the bones of the upper limb integrate with the bones of
the thorax and articulate with the cervical spine and skull above.
All of the muscles and ligaments have been stripped away,
to reveal just the underlying bony structure.
But in the diagram on the right,
which is a diagram of the shoulder,
we can see the important underlying soft tissue structures which
anchor the bones together and allow us to move them without them displacing out of joint.
In particular, around the shoulder,
which is the most mobile of all of the joints in the body,
it is important to have tight ligaments around
the shoulder to hold it in place and to prevent it dislocating.
Even with all this clever structure,
the shoulder is still the most easily dislocatable joint in the body.
Some surgeons say it is analogous to a golf ball sitting on top of a golf tee.
In this diagram, we see the ultrastructure of
cartilage which is crucial for the smooth lining of our joints.
It is interesting that with all the endeavours of
the space race with NASA over the past decades,
no human being or engineer has been able to come up with
any structure which is as friction-free as human cartilage.
It is a quite remarkable structure.
We'll now think about the components of the axial and appendicular skeleton,
