Abdominal Regions and Reference Planes

00:01 So now, let's have a look at some abdominal regions and the various planes that are used to describe those regions.

00:08 So, here we are again looking at the anterolateral abdominal wall.

00:12 And we can imagine a transverse plane that's going across the abdomen.

00:16 And this one is situated the inferior aspect of those costal cartilages that we described previously.

00:23 This is the subcostal plane.

00:25 We also have a transtubercular plane, and this runs again transversely across the abdomen, from each iliac tubercle on the superior aspect of the iliac part of the pelvic bone.

00:37 You can see here that it can then split up the abdomen into three regions.

00:42 The epigastrium which is located superior to the subcostal plane.

00:47 The mesogastrium which is situated between the subcostal and the transtubercular plane.

00:52 And then, inferiorly, we have the hypogastrium, and this is situated inferior to the transtubercular plane.

01:00 We can then add to what are known as paramedian or midclavicular lines.

01:06 And these run down in that paramedian plane.

01:09 You can see there.

01:10 And that very nicely separates the three areas into nine regions.

01:16 So now we can see these one through to nine.

01:19 Here in the top right hand aspect, we can see we have the right hypochondriac region.

01:26 We then have the epigastric region, and then we have the left hypochondriac region.

01:32 So these are situated all above the subcostal plane which is now separated into those three.

01:37 We have the left hypochondriac, we have the epigastric, and we have the right hypochondriac region.

01:44 So we can see those positioned on the screen.

01:47 Then if we look in the middle aspect, we have the right lateral region, we have the umbilical region, where you can see the umbilicus.

01:55 and we have the left lateral region.

01:58 Then most inferiorly, we have the right inguinal region, We'll come to that in much more detail later on.

02:04 We have the pubic region.

02:06 And then similarly, we have the left inguinal region as well.

02:10 So left inguinal, the pubic region, and the right inguinal.

02:14 We can see these three areas we described previously.

02:18 Now being split into those nine regions.

02:21 That's important when you're helping to describe which organ or which area of the surface of the abdomen may have a lesion or a marking.

02:30 And it helps to describe that location.

02:32 And everyone is unfamiliar using those terms where you are talking about.

02:38 We spoke about splitting into nine regions.

02:40 We can also talk about four quadrants.

02:42 This time, we look at the median plane, which is running right down the midline of the body.

02:48 So following the xiphisternum, of the xiphoid process on the inferior aspect of the sternum, all the way down to the pubic symphysis.

02:55 We can see it splitting the body into left and right halves.

02:58 We can then, we have a horizontal line or transverse kind of line going through the umbilicus there.

03:04 You can see, we've split the anterior abdominal wall into these four quadrants.

03:10 We now have the right upper quadrant, the left upper quadrant.

03:15 We have the right lower quadrant, and we have the left lower quadrant.

03:21 And you can see those four quadrants now on the screen.

03:26 As I mentioned a moment or two ago, the position of the organs can now be located within each of those quadrants or in those regions.