Question

Maria has been in a car accident and sustained blunt trauma to her abdomen. After being taken to the emergency room, she found out that the crash may have affected some of the organs in her abdominal cavity. Explain the function and location of the liver, the gallbladder, and the spleen.

Answer 1

-When a blunt trauma is sustained by the abdomen, various important viscera in the abdomen may be damaged either due to direct damage during injury or damage due to the acidic contents or digestive enzymes leaked from the gastrointestinal tract or from the pathogenic organisms of the gastrointestinal tract contaminating the viscera.

- Liver is located in the upper abdomen on the right side in the right hypochondrium beneath the diaphragm about the right kidney.

- Liver performs many vital functions like production of essential clotting factors, bile, plasma proteins, cholesterol, glucose storage by glycogenesis, glucose production by glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis, detoxification of ammonia to urea through urea cycle, detoxification of many harmful substances in the body, metabolism of drugs and metabolism of hemoglobin.

-Gall bladder is located on the undersurface of the liver on right side.

The gall bladder functions to store the bile produced from the liver when it is not used in the digestive process. And later released when required by its contractile mechanism. Bile helps in degradation of fats.

- Spleen is the largest organ of the lymphatic system located under the left rib cage (left hypochondrium)above the stomach.

Its functions are filtering the blood cells and pooling the blood and relesing and stimulating the lymphocytes in response to bacterial, viral, protozoal and other infections. It is enlarged in various infective and hematological conditions. It functions as a graveyard for the senile and abnormal blood cells.

Thus these vital functions are disturbed in injuries to the abdomen.