hello everyone this is dr alsup and we will be discussing the location of two of the three
main salivary glands i hope that these are on the easier side to locate soon for you
and then they can help guide you in identifying some of the surrounding structures which they
often do for me so let's get started all right excuse me all right we are looking at the largest
salivary gland here and this is the parotid gland and i'm going to kind of outline the
general location of the parotid gland it is this prominent structure in the inferior lateral aspect
of the face and you can really see some of those facial nerve branches extending
out from the anterior or superior or even the inferior borders of the parotid gland the prodigy
gland is located in the parotid fossa which is an irregularly shaped space the anterior boundary
of the space is the ramus of the mandible as well as the masseter which you can see here
the posterior boundary will be the mastoid process which is in this general region
as well as the sternocleidomastoid which you can see a bit more clearly
the superior boundary is typically the temporomandibular joint and the external
acoustic meatus which are both deep right about here ish and i actually think this particular
parietal gland extends a bit more superiorly which isn't uncommon for there to be variation
and the inferior boundary of the parotid fossa is the angular tract which is definitely not visible
on this image but it is a band of connective tissue that extends from
the angle of the mandible to the hyoid so that will be that inferior boundary
so the parietal gland generally lies within those boundaries with some variability which i actually
think we have on this particular donor here now one thing you can see quite nicely is the parotid
duct which is commonly referred to as stinson's duct i'm going to outline the general area and
you can see a facial nerve branch really closely traveling with it which isn't always the case but
it is this large structure right here it typically arises at the anterior border of the parotid gland
and i think it's a comparatively large structure particularly in comparison to a lot of those
facial nerve branches and i i say it looks similar to an artery not exactly but it's
it's a general kind of caliber of an artery it is typically a pretty similar color to the gland
it will travel superficial to the masseter muscle which you can see it doing here
and we'll dive deep to and through the buccinator muscle and that will be right around this region
here it's basically where you kind of lose that parotid duct you don't see it anymore
what you have right in this region is called the buccal fat pad and it's exactly what it
sounds like it's a pad of fat that's going to be superficial to the buccinator muscle
and so if you were to remove the fat pad you would be looking at the buccinator
muscle which is on a deeper plane than a lot of the other muscles of facial expression
and so that parotid duct will travel through the buccinator on its way towards the oral cavity
now the parietal duct will conduct saliva all the way from the parotid
gland which is that furthest away salivary gland from the oral cavity
to the papilla of the parotid or stinson's duct which you can see right about here-ish
it is this opening in the oral mucosa opposite the maxillary second molar so that's generally
where that papilla of the parotid duct can be located and you can even try to locate
the structure on yourself lastly let's identify the submandibular gland specifically we're only
identifying the superficial portions of the gland which you can see here
and here on this particular anterior image and you can see it over here as well
this exocrine gland is located near the angle of the mandible which you can see nicely right here
and in that submandibular triangle we will see the deeper portions of this gland and it's duct in the
oral cavity session so those are the main glands we are identifying for this session and once you
have these locations down i hope they can help guide you in identifying neighboring structures
please always feel free to reach out with any questions and have a wonderful day