Abstracts: Presented at the fourteenth annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists, July 9–11, 1997, Hawaiian Regent Hotel, Honolulu, Hawaii

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 176 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0897-3806
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1098-2353(1998)11:2<124::aid-ca10>3.0.co;2-l

✦ Synopsis

Creating a motion picture image of the pelvic diaphragm.

Most students have difficulty in gaining a three-dimensional appreciation of the pelvic diaphragm. For the first-time learner, the most useful viewpoint is at eye level, with the body in the upright position. This is best attained with specimens sectioned in the median sagittal plane. It is helpful to maintain this viewpoint and to stay on the same side of the body, in order to build an understanding of the pelvic walls and floor. It is profoundly helpful toward a three-dimensional understanding to have the specimen (or its image) set up so that it rotates about a vertical axis. The student first needs to gain a clear three-dimensional understanding of the bones that surround the pelvic cavity and their orientation in the upright posture. He/she next needs to understand the sacro-tuberous and sacro-spinous ligaments and the key muscles of the pelvic wall, piriformis, and obturator internus. Once the student clearly understands these structures, the muscles of the pelvic diaphragm can readily be added to the picture. In discussing a practical way to achieve these teaching and learning goals, this work shows some of the steps that have been involved in producing the section of the Video Atlas of Human Anatomy, which describes the pelvic cavity.