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Cecum
 
 
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The cecum or caecum (from the Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 caecus meaning blind
Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define "blindness." Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation for "no ligh...
) is a pouch connected to the ascending colon
Ascending colon

The ascending colon is smaller in caliber than the cecum, with which it is continuous.It passes upward, from its commencement at the cecum, opposite the colic valve, to the under surface of the right lobe of the liver, on the right of the gall-bladderyeo, where it is lodged in a shallow depression, the colic impression; here it bends abrupt...
 of the large intestine
Large intestine

The large intestine is the last part of the digestive system?the final stage of the alimentary canal?in vertebrate animals. Its function is to absorb water from the remaining indigestible food matter, and then to pass this useless feces from the body....
 and the ileum
Ileum

The ileum is the final section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, and birds. In fish, the divisions of the small intestine are not as clear and the terms posterior intestine or distal intestine may be used instead of ileum....
. It is separated from the ileum by the ileocecal valve
Ileocecal valve

The ileocecal valve is a sphincter muscle situated at the junction of the small intestine and the large intestine. Its critical function is to limit the reflux of colonic contents into the ileum....
 (ICV) or Bauhin's valve, and is considered to be the beginning of the large intestine. It is also separated from the colon
Colon (anatomy)

The colon is the last portion of the digestive system in most vertebrates; it extracts water and salt from feces before they are defecation from the body....
 by the cecocolic junction.

cecum is present in mammal
Mammal

Mammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature, mammary glands, with which they feed their young....
s and squid, and two ceca are present in most bird
Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s (and some reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
s).

Most herbivore
Herbivore

Herbivory is a form of predation in which an organism, known as an herbivore, heterotrophs principally autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria....
s have a relatively large cecum , hosting a large number of bacteria, which aid in the enzymatic
Enzyme

Enzymes are biomolecules that catalysis chemical reactions. Almost all enzymes are proteins. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called Substrate , and the enzyme converts them into different molecules, the products....
 breakdown of plant materials such as cellulose
Cellulose

File:Cellulose Sessel.svgCellulose is an organic compound with the chemical formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand ? linked D-glucose units....
.

Exclusive carnivore
Carnivore

A carnivore , meaning 'meat eater' , is any animal with a diet consisting mainly of meat, whether it comes from animals living or dead .In a more general sense, an animal may be considered a carnivore if it prefers feeding on animal matter over plant matter....
s, whose diets contain little or no plant material, have a reduced cecum; often partially or wholly replaced by the vermiform appendix
Vermiform appendix

In human anatomy, the appendix is a blind ended tube connected to the cecum , from which it develops embryologically. The cecum is a pouch-like structure of the Colon ....
.






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The cecum or caecum (from the Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 caecus meaning blind
Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define "blindness." Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation for "no ligh...
) is a pouch connected to the ascending colon
Ascending colon

The ascending colon is smaller in caliber than the cecum, with which it is continuous.It passes upward, from its commencement at the cecum, opposite the colic valve, to the under surface of the right lobe of the liver, on the right of the gall-bladderyeo, where it is lodged in a shallow depression, the colic impression; here it bends abrupt...
 of the large intestine
Large intestine

The large intestine is the last part of the digestive system?the final stage of the alimentary canal?in vertebrate animals. Its function is to absorb water from the remaining indigestible food matter, and then to pass this useless feces from the body....
 and the ileum
Ileum

The ileum is the final section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, and birds. In fish, the divisions of the small intestine are not as clear and the terms posterior intestine or distal intestine may be used instead of ileum....
. It is separated from the ileum by the ileocecal valve
Ileocecal valve

The ileocecal valve is a sphincter muscle situated at the junction of the small intestine and the large intestine. Its critical function is to limit the reflux of colonic contents into the ileum....
 (ICV) or Bauhin's valve, and is considered to be the beginning of the large intestine. It is also separated from the colon
Colon (anatomy)

The colon is the last portion of the digestive system in most vertebrates; it extracts water and salt from feces before they are defecation from the body....
 by the cecocolic junction.

Variation across species

The cecum is present in mammal
Mammal

Mammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature, mammary glands, with which they feed their young....
s and squid, and two ceca are present in most bird
Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s (and some reptile
Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
s).

Most herbivore
Herbivore

Herbivory is a form of predation in which an organism, known as an herbivore, heterotrophs principally autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria....
s have a relatively large cecum , hosting a large number of bacteria, which aid in the enzymatic
Enzyme

Enzymes are biomolecules that catalysis chemical reactions. Almost all enzymes are proteins. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called Substrate , and the enzyme converts them into different molecules, the products....
 breakdown of plant materials such as cellulose
Cellulose

File:Cellulose Sessel.svgCellulose is an organic compound with the chemical formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand ? linked D-glucose units....
.

Exclusive carnivore
Carnivore

A carnivore , meaning 'meat eater' , is any animal with a diet consisting mainly of meat, whether it comes from animals living or dead .In a more general sense, an animal may be considered a carnivore if it prefers feeding on animal matter over plant matter....
s, whose diets contain little or no plant material, have a reduced cecum; often partially or wholly replaced by the vermiform appendix
Vermiform appendix

In human anatomy, the appendix is a blind ended tube connected to the cecum , from which it develops embryologically. The cecum is a pouch-like structure of the Colon ....
. It is in the large intestine which is near the small intestine.

Etymology

The term cecum comes from the Latin caecum, literally "blind", here in the sense "blind gut" or "cul de sac".

In dissection
Dissection

Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the function and relationships of its components....
s by the Greek
Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
 philosophers
Greek philosophy

Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. Many philosophers today concede that Greek philosophy has shaped the entire Western thought since its inception....
, the connection between the ileum
Ileum

The ileum is the final section of the small intestine in most higher vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, and birds. In fish, the divisions of the small intestine are not as clear and the terms posterior intestine or distal intestine may be used instead of ileum....
 of the small intestines and the cecum was not fully understood. Most of the studies of the digestive tract
Gastrointestinal tract

The digestive tract is the system of Organ s within multicellular animals that takes in food, digestion it to extract energy and nutrients, and expels the remaining waste....
 were done on animals and the results were compared to human structures
Human anatomy

Human anatomy, which, with physiology and biochemistry, is a complementary basic medical science is primarily the scientific study of the morphology of the adult human body....
.

The junction between the small intestine and the colon, called the ileocecal valve, is so small in some animals that it was not considered to be a connection between the small and large intestines. During a dissection, the colon could be traced from the rectum
Rectum

The rectum is the final straight portion of the large intestine in some mammals, and the Gastrointestinal tract in others, terminating in the anus....
, to the sigmoid colon
Sigmoid colon

The sigmoid colon forms a loop which averages about 40 cm. in length, and normally lies within the pelvis, but on account of its freedom of movement it is liable to be displaced into the abdominal cavity....
, through the descending
Descending colon

The descending colon of humans passes downward through the left hypochondrium and lumbar regions, along the lateral border of the left kidney....
, transverse
Transverse colon

The transverse colon the longest and most movable part of the Colon , passes with a downward convexity from the right hypochondrium region across the abdomen, opposite the confines of the epigastric and umbilical zones, into the left hypochondrium region, where it curves sharply on itself beneath the lower end of the spleen, forming the splen...
, and ascending
Ascending colon

The ascending colon is smaller in caliber than the cecum, with which it is continuous.It passes upward, from its commencement at the cecum, opposite the colic valve, to the under surface of the right lobe of the liver, on the right of the gall-bladderyeo, where it is lodged in a shallow depression, the colic impression; here it bends abrupt...
 sections. The colon seemed to dead-end into the cecum, or cul-de-sac.

The connection between the end of the small intestine (ileum) and the start of the colon (cecum) is now clearly understood, but the name has not changed.

See also

  • McBurney's point
    McBurney's point

    McBurney's point is the name given to the point over the right side of the abdomen that is one-third of the distance from the ASIS to the Navel ....


Additional images


External links

- "Abdominal organs in situ." - "The larger intestine." - "The cecum with the distal portion of the ileum."