A Voyage Through the Femoral Vein
Carol Ritter
HS130-02
Unit #4 Assignment
Kaplan University
July 6, 2013

A Voyage Through the Femoral Vein
Hi there! My name is Katie Curious and I just got a special assignment. This is going to be the best assignment of my career! I have been asked to have myself shrunk down to eight microns long and be injected into the femoral vein. I feel like I am in the movie, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids.” This could be my big break in the news business. I am taking a few of my closest friends with me to help me witness this historical moment as to not miss a thing. My “victim” is Holly, a forty five year old female who has been complaining of pains in her leg. It may get hot in there because she has been complaining of the area getting very warm. Are you ready to go?
Here we go…….time to go in!! Hold onto your seats everyone! WEEEEEEEE! This is the best roller coaster ride ever! We started our journey in the femoral vein. There is sure a lot of blood in this vein! It is good we all wore our raincoats. An alert just came and we are in for a wild surprise. A bacterium has invaded Holly’s lower lobe of her right lung and we need to report the invasion and document all we see. Wow…..we are in Holly’s thigh right now and it is pretty warm. It looks like there is a small blood clot that is causing a blockage. That could be the reason that she is feeling warmness and pain in her thigh. I am hoping this does not have anything to do with the bacteria in the lower lobe of her right lung. The femoral vein runs parallel with the femoral artery through the upper thigh and pelvic region of the body. The femoral vein is one of the larger veins in the body, the femoral vein returns blood into the leg to the heart through the iliac vein. Watch out for flying objects! This is really a crazy ride…..we are pumping away! Before we get to the iliac vein, we are going to pass through the inguinal ligament that forms a band, almost looks like a bridge, going from anterior superior iliac spine to the pubis ligament. The role of the inguinal ligament is to protect the tissue movement between the trunk and the lower extremities. From the inguinal ligament, going north, we are going to see the external iliac vein which is a continuation of the femoral vein just above the inguinal ligament. I am really glad that I brought my compass along, because I don’t think my GPS would have worked in here. Starting at the groin area the external iliac vein goes along the pelvic area. When it intersects with the internal iliac vein, we will navigate east into the common iliac vein that functions to drain the perianal regions. Get out the umbrellas, because it is definitely draining and doing its job. The iliac veins are joined together to form inferior vena cava, also known as posterior vena cava, is a vein that carries a lot of deoxygenated blood from the lower body to the heart. I am glad that they told us to make sure that we have oxygen with us when we go through this point because the oxygen level in here is a little low. It runs behind the abdominal cavity. Just passed the abdominal cavity and I don’t know what they had for lunch, but it does not look very appetizing now. We are already alongside the right vertebrae column of the spine. Wow…..and I thought fish were bony! This vein sure carries a lot of the blood from the lower body to the heart and lungs. Oh no! There goes that nasty bacterium heading straight through the external iliac, it seems as if it’s headed toward the lungs! From here we can already see the heart. Isn’t it fantastic? I think after taking this journey, I just might skip being a newswoman and go back to school to be a doctor.
As we exit the right pulmonary artery out of the heart and into the right lung, you will notice that the right lung has three lobes, unlike the left lung. These three lobes are known as the Superior lobe, at the top, the