Hello everyone,how are you all? I am doing well and hope you also doing well.my recent post is about abdomen anatomy and we learnt about how the abdomen is divided into regions,its layers and so on.now we are going to continue abdomen anatomy and we are going to learn about inguinal canal which is very very important because one clinical condition is associated with this. Lets learn it....
INGUINAL CANAL
It is a canal present in inguinal region and it is located above and medial to inguinal ligament Inguinal canal is present above and medial to inguinal ligament.it is about 4cm in length.
Inguinal canal extends from deep inguinal ring to superficial inguinal ring.where is deep and superficial rings present? Deep inguinal ring is present in the transversalis fascia and superficial inguinal ring is present in the external oblique muscle. I made a 3d module from app to understand it easily.lets see it....
In the above module we can see 4 layers of anterior abdominal wall and inguinal canal.we can notice that in inguinal canal there ia content named spermatic cord. Spermatic cord is content of inguinal canal in males and in females round ligament of uterus is content of inguinal canal. Ilioinguinal nerve is present both male and female inguinal canal.
We can see few more images of 3d modules so that we can undertsand them clearly.these images are not exact images but for just understanding the anatomy.
The below image is from backside or posterior side.we can see the transversalis fascia layer.
We can see the green color thing below inguinal canal and it is called Inguinal ligament so the structure above the inguinal ligament is inguinal canal.
Now lets see this image
You can see in the above image inguinal canal where it is present.
Contents of Inguinal canal
Inguinal canal has two contents in male and female.in males it is spermatic cord and ilioinguinal nerve and in female it is round ligament of uterus and ilioinguinal nerve.
You can see the contents on inguinal canal in males which is spermatic cord.
During embryonic life and development testes are present in the abdomen but they have to descend and come into scrotum.so while descending, they pass through this inguinal canal and comes into testes.so in this way the inguinal canal helps for passage of testes from abdomen to scrotum.you can read it here
Contents of spermatic cord are
- testicular artery
- pampiniform plexus
- genital branch of genitofemoral nerve
- vas deferens/ductus deferens
- artery to ductus deferens
- remnant of processus vaginalis
- cremasteric vessels
8)external spermatic fascia - cremasteric muscles and fascia
- internal spermatic fascia
Clinical application
Hasselbach's triangle/Inguinal triangle
The green labelled triangle is called inguinal triangle.boundaries are-
1)base - inguinal ligament
2)medial boundary - lateral boundary of rectus abdominis
3)lateral boundary - inferior epigastric vessels
An inguinal hernia is a hernia (protrusion) of abdominal-cavity contents through the inguinal canal.
Direct inguinal hernia is through the hasselbachs triangle
Indirect inguinal hernia is through deep inguinal ring
Hope you understood about inguinal canal.i request you to please go through my recent post before you read this one.so that you can u understand it easily.we are going to learn more about abdomen in next post.stay tuned for that.
REFERENCES
Borley, Neil R et al. Gray's Anatomy. 40th ed., Churchill Livingstone, 2008, pp. 1063 - 1067.
Courtney M. Townsend Jr., MD, R. Daniel Beauchamp, MD, B. Mark Evers, MD and Kenneth L. Mattox, MD (2008). "Ch.43". Sabiston Textbook of Surgery (18th ed.). Elsevier.
Thanks for reading,
With regards
