Where Kidney Located? Surprising That Very Few People Know This.

 

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Okay, this article is on the kidneys. So, in this article I'm going to talk about the relations of the kidneys.

So, its location in relation to other structures in the abdomen. And also, we’ll talk about the external features of the kidneys.

So, the function of the kidneys is really to filter blood and excrete waste, and excess water is urine. And it also regulates blood pressure, blood pH, blood volume, and its important salt balance and electrolyte balance.

So, let's just bring some other structures in and take a look at the sort of relative location of the kidneys.

 

So, you can see here that they sit sort of on the posterior abdominal wall, and they sit either side of the vertebra. So, they sit at roughly the level of T12 down to L3.

so, they're not quite shown it extending quite that far, but most textbooks say they extend from T12 down to L3.

So, if I just bring in the rest of the abdominal organs fadeaway the muscles again, we can see how the kidneys sit behind these organs so they sit quite far back in the abdomen, so they sit on the posterior abdominal wall, and the kidneys are retroperitoneal so they're not contained within the folds of peritoneum, which some of the other organs of the abdominal cavity are.

 

so, each kidney has a superior and an inferior pole, and medially you've got this kind of vertical slit where various structures enter and exit the kidney and this is called the hilum. So, the structure you can see here, coming out of the kidneys is called the ureter but you also have the artery and vein, the renal artery and vein entering the kidney.  also, there are nerves and lymphatics.

So, I've just brought in the cardiovascular system here, and you can see the large and inferior vena cava and the abdominal aorta here and coming off of it, you can see the renal veins and arteries on either side entering the hilum together with the ureter.

So, I mean on this model, it's not really demonstrating that well, they're kind of shown just sticking onto this side of the kidney, but they actually enter medially into this vertical little slit into the inside of the kidney, and this is called the hilum.

So, the hilum lies at vertebral level L1, so this is L1 vertebra. So, we'll just take a quick look at some of the posterior relations of the kidney. So, if we look at the back, we can see that the 12th Flip nice behind the kidney. If we see the musculature, we can see some of the muscles which sit behind it. So, you can see the size major on either side sits behind it.And you've got the diaphragm so the posterior parts of the diaphragm sitting behind the kidney.

 

You've got the quadratus lumborum, which is this muscle here. So, it's kind of obscured in this model by the huge SAS major muscle. front you can see that the quadratus lumborum is hidden because sas major, so big in this model.

 And then you've also got the transversus abdominus muscle which is not shown in this model and also couple of nerves. So, you've got this subcostal nerve, the iliohypogastric nerve and the ilioinguinal nerves. So, you can see these two here so you can see the iliohypogastric and the ilioinguinal nerve here. So that's what lies behind both the kidneys. But what is in front of the kidneys is different for the right kidney and the left kidney. So, we'll take a look first at the right to kidney.

 

 So, if you look at the kidneys from this view, you can see that the right kidney is slightly lower than the left kidney. And there's a reason for this. It's because of this large organ, the liver which sits on top of it. So, the right lobe of the liver is quite big and it sort of pushes it down. So, the right kidney is a little bit lower than the left kidney. So, you can see the colon once in front of the kidney. and the hepatic flexure or the right colic flexure lies in front of the kidney. So, it runs in front of the lower part of the kidney, the inferior pole of the kidney. that's the hepatic flexure the descending part of the duodenum sits in front of the medial part of the kidney.

So, the descending part of the duodenum was retroperitoneal as well and it sits right up against the kidney. you can see this thing on top of the kidney so this is the super renal gland or the adrenal gland.

 

So, I've just bought those structures back and we'll take a look at what sits in front of the left kidney. So, the other side of the colon sits in front of the left kidney so we've got the splenic flexure or the left colic flexure. you can see the stomach and the spleen sitting in front of it.  then you can see the end of the pancreas sitting in front of it as well. So, the pancreas is a retroperitoneal structure. whereas the stomach can spin out both intraperitoneal structures and then it's also got this super renal gland sitting on top of this and the other adrenal gland.

 

so hopefully that's orientated you a bit and you know exactly where the kidneys lie now, and next we'll talk a little bit about the capsules of the kidney and the blood supply to the kidney. Comment down below if want to know about the internal structure of the kidney. And follow my blog for more such content.