Description
N. I. Pirogov, the founder of topographical anatomy, introduced theterm “surgical anatomy” for the location and interaction of organs and tissues in surgical diseases. Surgical anatomy is changed during surgery as a result of the surgeon’s activity. At certain stages of operation the tissue patterns are invariable, i.e., the topographical anatomy is observed. In other areas, normal topographical anatomy is converted into pathotopographical anatomy.
Presently, the problem of atraumatic visualization of topographical and pathotopographical anatomy is fairly urgent for practical medicine for the purposes of differentiation between norm and pathology, variants of the norm, and specific and non-specific variants of pathotopography. The method of ultrasonic topographical and pathotopographical anatomy developed by the authors of this monograph provides an opportunity for solving this problem.
During the last decade we have used this method to study normal and pathological topographoanatomical structures of the human body and development anomalies. Specific features of topographical anatomy due to inflammatory processes, obstruction of tubular organs, in tissues modified as a result of dystrophy, obesity, tuberculosis, and tumor have been determined. Layer-by-layer ultrasonic topography, holotopy, and syntopy have been studied. The data obtained in this work were compared with the conventional topographical data, as well as the results obtained by functional methods of optometry and pulsomotorgraphy developed by Prof. Z. M. Seagal.
It is important to note that a living human body was tested both in the norm and pathology. This provides more reliable diagnosis, development of sparing operations, and atraumatic and effective control of therapy.
Further development of ultrasonic topography and pathotopography should be focused on typical anatomy, i.e., the study of distribution of tissues and systems within the human body, as well as location of organs and parts of the body. It was noted that people with a certain constitution and of a definite age had an extreme type of structure and location of organs. The importance of ultrasonic scanning for the typical
anatomy is that it provides differentiation between the age norm and the pathology.
For the first time ultrasonic topographical anatomy was used for diagnosis in studies of this kind, in full accordance with the physician’s motto “to treat the patient rather than the disease”.
Ultrasonic topographical anatomy contributes to differentiating congenital defects that could necessitate urgent treatment.
In addition to development of new topographical and pathotopographical human anatomy, we acquired the experience in teaching this discipline to physicians of various specialties. It was taught to interns, junior physicians, medical residents, and medical students, as well as specialists in surgery, traumatology, neurosurgery, oncology, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, dental surgery, anesthesiology, and other medical specialists concerned with different topographical and anatomical structures (neurologists, dentists, ophthalmologists, pathologists, forensic medical examiners, etc.).