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Liver and spleen

Published on July 30, 2020   26 min

A selection of talks on Gastroenterology & Nephrology

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0:00
My name is Kapil Satyapal. I'm an emeritus professor and fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which is located in Durban in South Africa. I am going to be talking to you on the liver and spleen, and what I will be doing is I will be showing you a series of slides and we'll address each one of them. Kindly note that this is an introductory talk and I would urge you to read your recommended texts as well as examine these organs inside you in the dissection hall and any other aid you may have. I would also encourage you to read up on the embryology of these organs. There are also several applied clinically relevant aspects. However, I will only mention a few to whet your appetite, so to speak.
0:56
To begin with, we are going to discuss the surface projection of the liver. You may recall that the abdomen is divided arbitrarily into nine regions. If we have a look at this diagram, on the left, will show you the transpyloric line, which is through the pylorus, this is horizontal. And the lower one through the transtubercular line, which is approximately five centimeters behind the anterior superior iliac spine on the iliac crest. There are two vertical lines projected downwards through the midclavicular point, thereby dividing the abdomen into nine regions. We can therefore see that the upper three are comprised of the right and left hypochondrium with the epigastrium in the center. Then the middle three comprises the right and left lumbar region with the umbilical region in the middle, and the bottom three is the right and left iliac area with the suprapubic region in the middle. It's sometimes also referred to as the hypogastric. At the middle slide, is a slide that I've just put in, just to alert you that clinicians use a simpler manner in which to divide the abdomen, and they do so in quadrants, and the lines depicted there, the vertical line going down is through the xiphisternum and the symphysis pubis, and the horizontal line through the umbilicus. So you have four different quadrants; two upper, the right and left, and two lower, right and left lower quadrants. We will use the standard description to describe the liver and you will note on the left-hand side that the liver is situated above the transpyloric line extending over towards the epigastrium and left hypochondrium.

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