Why is anatomical position important

Subscribe Here! Most Popular. Get our awesome anatomy emails! About News Contact. All Rights Reserved. User Agreement Privacy Permissions. At or near the front of the body front view. At or near the back of the body back view. Farther from midline side view. Nearer to midline side view. There are really two anatomical positions. There is one position considered the western anatomical position and there is also an eastern anatomical position.

They are more similar than different, but they do have some slight differences. In western anatomical position, we are looking at a person standing who is facing forward, with their legs slightly apart, with arms by their sides, and their palms facing forward. In eastern anatomical position the feet may be positioned together and the hands may be held above the head rather than by the sides of the body.

This text is not intended to exhaust the subject nor to recommend an immediate change of the current clinical nomenclature, but only to alert and make the reader and students aware of the frequent use of inappropriate or outdated terms in the description of the morphology, location and function of anatomical structures, as well as of the exaggerated use of non-informative eponyms. The nomenclature based on the correct anatomical orientation and based on the official and current Anatomical Terminology facilitates not only the spatial location of the structures, but also the relationships with the other structures and organs 2 2.

Open menu Brazil. Open menu. ING copy. Dear Editor, Anatomical Terminology TA is a unique collection of technical terms that allow communication in anatomy and medicine worldwide 1 1.

Another important issue reported in the work of Novak and collaborators is that: […] the terms used in medical publications suffer variations when comparing different authors and different journals.

Publication Dates Publication in this collection 21 Aug Date of issue History Received 31 May Accepted 13 July This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. In humans, the standard anatomical position of the skull is called the Frankfurt plane. In this position, the orbitales eye sockets , lower margins of the orbits, and the poria ear canal upper margins all lie in the same horizontal plane. This orientation represents the position of the skull if the subject were standing upright and looking straight ahead.

It is important to note that all anatomical descriptions are based on the standard anatomical position unless otherwise stated. Learning Objectives Describe the standard position in human anatomy. Key Points In standard anatomical position, the limbs are placed similarly to the supine position imposed on cadavers during autopsy.