Fantastic Voyage to the Lungs!

EXPLORER’S VOYAGE

JANELLE MITCHELL

HS130-02

KAPLAN UNIVERITY

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Hello my fellow scientist! Today we are going on a field trip. I am glad we all are only 8 inches tall because we can jump in my mini sub and go! We are going on a trip through a healthy young lady’s body named Tara. Tara has bacteria invading the lower lobe of her right lung, we are going to find it and make sure the body’s defense mechanisms are working to kill it. Everyone grab a seat and let’s begin! Now we are being injected into Tara’s femoral vein. The femoral vein is the large vein in the groin that passes with the femoral artery under the inguinal ligament to enter the abdomen, and then it becomes the external iliac vein. The femoral vein carries blood back to the heart from the lower extremities. We are in the femoral vein and we are going to start traveling from the right femoral vein to get to the infection. The femoral vein runs parallel with the femoral artery through the upper thigh and pelvic region of the body (INNERBODY, 2013). The femoral vein returns blood into the leg, to the heart through the iliac vein but that is not our first stop. We are passing the inguinal ligament, and this forms a band that goes from the anterior superior iliac spine to the pubis ligament. While going through the inguinal ligament we see that it functions to hold in place several tissues of the pelvis as they cross into the front of the leg. From the inguinal ligament we are going north and now we will see the external iliac vein. We are still in the femoral vein, just above the inguinal ligament. The groin area is where the external iliac vein goes along the pelvic area and intersects with the internal iliac vein. Let’s travel east so we can enter the common iliac vein, its function is to drain the perennial regions. The iliac veins join together to form the inferior vena cava, which is also referred to as the posterior vena cava.

The inferior vena cava is a vein that carries...