Hello anatomy friends this is Dr Alsup and in this video we will be discussing the popliteal
fossa and I think popliteal I think knee region. And these actually have some
similarities to the cubital fossa we discussed in the elbow region but now we're
in the knee so our primary objective is just to understand where this popliteal fossa is located
and also to understand the organization of the fairly large neurovasculature within the fossa.
So we are looking at a posterior view of the knee region and when you look at a living individual
it's that slight kind of diamond-like depression in the back of the knee
that is covering the popliteal fossa so try putting your hand behind your knee right now
or in that posterior portion of your knee and that is the popliteal fossa.
The fossa is bound by muscle tendons specifically we're going to have hamstring muscles superiorly
so here is going to be those medial hamstring muscles and your lateral hamstring muscle biceps
femoris and then it's also going to be bound by the two heads of the gastronemius or the
gastrocnemius which is one of your calf muscles so this is these are both gastrocnemius here. And
before dissection this area is filled with a great degree of adipose tissue or fat to protect the
structures traveling within, and you can see this is going to be some fairly large neurovasculature
that's traversing between the thigh and the leg so let's talk about that neurovasculature.
Again these are fairly large structures that are organized in a pretty typical fashion.
From superficial to deep or you can think of it from posterior to anterior let's think through
these structures so the most superficial other than of course fascia and some smaller cutaneous nerves
and veins will be the sciatic nerve and it will be fairly superiorly within the popliteal fossa
so you can see the sciatic nerve here and it will divide into its two terminal branches if
it hasn't already done so there's some variation there sometimes it can split quite a bit higher.
The larger and more medial terminal branch is going to be the tibial nerve
and to me it's usually the most prominent thing you can see here until you've done
a very deep deep dissection. The smaller and more lateral nerve
is the common fibular sometimes referred to as the common peroneal nerve you will hear either term.
Intermediate in depth but I would describe still kind of on the deeper side is the popliteal vein
you can see the vein here and deepest of all will be the popliteal artery. And when I say deep
I mean deep it is so deep that it's actually kind of sitting on the surface
of the posterior femur so you have to do quite a bit of dissection and quite a bit of removal
of fat to get to it you can feel a popliteal pulse but it's difficult just due to the depth sometimes
if you flex the knee and kind of really put your hand in there you can feel it but again it's
a very deep artery. Often times in dissection one will say they can only find one vascular structure
and that is typically because the popliteal vein and artery are often wrapped very tightly together
in fascia so rest assured if you further dissect you can separate the structures and the popliteal
vein will be a little more superficial with the popliteal artery deepest. Right at the border of
the popliteal fossa the popliteal artery will divide into its terminal branches the
anterior and posterior tibial arteries which will supply the anterior and posterior compartments of
the leg so the anterior tibial artery will kind of dive over the interosseus membrane
to supply that anterior compartment and then the posterior of course will supply the posterior. So
a fairly small area but very important structures within. And we have reached the summary slide I
hope you will consolidate this material and I hope this slide will help with your studying.
thank you for your time and attention here and as always I hope you have a great rest of your day