Surface Anatomy of the Pancreas

00:01 So in this topic, let's move on to the pancreas and the spleen.

00:06 So let's first of all start off by having a look at the location of both the pancreas and spleen within the abdomen.

00:13 So here we can see the pancreas which is kind of like a hockey stick in shape.

00:17 We can see that the curve of the pancreas.

00:20 We can see here as an the uncinate process.

00:23 And then, it has a very much larger head which sits in the concavity of the duodenum.

00:28 So here, we've got the pancreas sitting across the major blood vessels of the abdomen, the aorta, and the inferior vena cava.

00:35 We've got the head. We've got the uncinate process which really looks like the head of a hockey stick that's curved over on itself within the concavity of the duodenum.

00:45 The head then moves across to the left of the abdomen as it heads towards the spleen, as a neck, the body, and then the tail.

00:53 And we have the tail of the pancreas situated really within the hilum of the spleen.

00:58 And we'll look at that in a moment or two.

01:01 But you can see also travels across the anterior surface of the kidney over on the left hand side.

01:06 So a brief overview of the pancreas within the human abdomen.

01:12 So now, let's have a look at the position of the pancreas within the abdomen.

01:16 So we've got a familiar picture here.

01:18 And we can see the liver, the duodenum.

01:20 We can see a bit of the gallbladder, and we've got the inferior ribs.

01:24 We can remind ourselves of the head of the pancreas here.

01:27 And we can see that duodenal curve, the concavity of the second, third, and fourth parts of the duodenum.

01:35 Here we can see the neck which is very much in the midline, and it's situated around the second, and first lumbar vertebrae.

01:42 The first, and second lumbar vertebrae.

01:44 We can see the position of the neck of the pancreas.

01:48 The body and tail then ran along the posterior abdominal wall going over the kidney.

01:53 And then, the tail goes or sits within the hilum of the spleen.

01:57 If we were to introduce this line here, this is the transpyloric plane.

02:01 And that's the region where the pylorus of the stomach is situated anterior to the neck of the pancreas.