Variants of Mutual Arrangement of Parts of Human Pancreas According to Computed Tomography Data

INTRODUCTION: With development of methods of diagnosis and surgical treatment of diseases of hepatopancreato-biliary region, there is increasing interest in and necessity to search for various methods of studying organs of this zone. Compared to the earlier methods of studying topographic anatomy, the method of computed tomography (KT) permits to work with a wide scope of lifetime data of human anatomy. We did not find enough information in the literature about peculiarities of the shape, size and position of pancreas in the horizontal projection.

AIM: To study the peculiarities of the shape, size and position of the pancreas using contrast-enhanced CT data.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The work was based on the available archive of examination of organs of the abdominal cavity by CT method with contrast in patients (n = 31) without pathology of the hepatopancreatobiliary zone, gastrointestinal tract, spleen, kidneys and spine. Measurements were performed based on the horizontal projection of scans. The length was determined by measuring the organ in parts. The degree of curvature of the pancreas shape was determined by constructing the central axis of the organ and measuring the angles formed by it. The obtained data were subjected to statistical processing.

RESULTS: According to increase in the length of the organ, three groups were formed. Different degrees of the organ bending were identified. Upon that, no clear correlation was found with skeletopy data, age and gender and parametric data of the upper part of the abdominal cavity.

CONCLUSION: Owing to the developed method of measuring angles between parts of the pancreas, a range of mutual arrangement of the head and body, body and tail of the gland in the horizontal projection was obtained. Our data complement the anatomy of the pancreas and can be considered as a promising resource for further study of the features of syntopy and blood supply of the organs of the upper part of the abdominal cavity.