Anatomy Terms

Sometimes the words we end up using in Anatomy bother me.

Some of them are not descriptive, which bugs me. For example, the accessory pancreatic duct in the dog is the primary route by which pancreatic secretions reach the jejunum. The pancreatic duct may not even be present. (That varies from dog to dog.)

Some of them are overly descriptive. For example, the perforating branch of metatarsal II. This would make sense if there were other branches that perforated the foot... but, there's only the one artery. Too much information!

Then, we just use some of the same words over and over and over. For example, there are 3 (!) zygomatic processes in the skull. The zygomatic process of the maxillary bone, the zygomatic process of the temporal bone (both of which join the zygomatic bone to form the zygomatic arch) and the zygomatic process of the frontal bone (which points off the frontal bone toward the zygomatic arch... which has a frontal process of the zygomatic bone.)

Anyway, I think the terminology is ridiculous sometimes!

Pathology Club Rounds

The pathology club that I'm in periodically does what they call "50x rounds" where clinicians present a case seen by the clinics.

Today, one of the cases was a 6 month old Doberman Pinscher show dog who presented this summer with a week long history of lethargy and an insanely high white blood cell count. It turns out he had leukemia.

The most interesting part of this was that dog was refered by the clinic I worked for this summer! I remember this dog! He came in for the appointment that got him referred to A&M while I was working! I think I may have even actually run his initial blood work myself!

What a small world!