Seven Organizational Approaches To Examining The Human Body Paper

Richard A. Andersen
HCA 220
Week 2 Assignment
Professor Danielle Griffin
January 22, 2014

There are seven organizational approaches to examining the human body, each way being significant in that it allows for the human body to be examined from a specific point of view, helps to understand the complexity of each working system, and provides information that is unique to each approach, by organizing the body in a logical and sensible way (Turley, 2011. P. 41). These seven systems are body planes and directions, body cavities, quadrants and regions, anatomy and physiology, microscopic and macroscopic, body systems, and medical specialty. Each of these approaches can be defined and explained as to how each one is used to examine the human body.
There are three main body planes; the coronal or frontal plane, the sagittal plane, and the transverse plane. The coronal plane is a length-wise plane that runs from side to side, and divides the body into anterior and posterior (front and back) sections. The sagittal plane is a length-wise plane that runs from the front to the back and separates the body into a right and left side. The transverse plane is a horizontal plane that divides the body into an upper and lower section. Understanding how the body planes and directions work makes it much easier to study anatomy. This helps to be able to visualize the position and spacial locations of the bodies’ structures and to be able to navigate according to direction from one area to another (Thibodeau & Patton,