Canine Pelvis
Full Title: Canine Pelvis
Author: Claudia Dudley
Date of Publication: January 1, 2017
PDF: http://petmassage.com/wp-content/uploads/Canine-Pelvis-by-Claudia-Dudley-2013-07-20.pdf
Research Paper Text:
The pelvis is the lower part of the trunk, It is located between the abdomen and the lower limbs.
In a human the pelvic skeleton forms in the area of the back. The pelvic skeleton is composed of three large bones and the coccyx. Before puberty each hip bone consists of three discrete bones called the illium, ischium, pubis. The human pelvic skeleton can compromise over ten bones but depends upon the composition of the person’s coccyx. The skeleton of the pelvis is a ring of bones connecting the vertebral column to the femora. The pelvic cavity is a body cavity that is bounded by the bones of the pelvis and contains the rectum and reproductive organs. The pelvic floor has two conflicting functions. One is to close the pelvic and abdominal cavaties. They bear the load of the visceral organs. The other is to control the openings of the rectum and urogenital organs. They pierce the pelvic floor and makes it weaker. For the pelvic floor to be able to achieve the tasks, it is composed of several overlapping sheets of muscle and connective tissue. The pelvic girdle consist of two hip bones. They are connected to each other anteriorly at the pubic symphysis. They are connected posteriorly to the sacrum to form the pelvic ring. The ring is very stable and it allows very little mobility. The pelvic inclination angle is the single most important element of the human body when it comes to posture and is adjusted at the hips. It is also one of the rare things that can be measured at the assessment of the posture. There are three extracapsular ligaments of the hip joint. They are the iliofemoral, ischiofemoral, and the pubofemoral ligaments. They form a twisting mechanism encircling the neck of the femur. When sitting with the hip joint flexed, these ligaments become lax and they allow a high degree of mobility in the joint. The intracapsular ligament , transmits blood vessels that nourish the femoral head. The muscles of the hip are divided in to a dorsal and a ventral group. The dorsal hip muscles are either inserted in the anterior or posterior group. The iliopsoas is the powerful hip flexor. In later stages of pregnancy the fetus’s head aligns inside the pelvis. Joints of the bones soften due to the effect of pregnancy hormones. This can cause pelvic joint pain. When the end of pregnancy approaches , the ligaments of the sacroiliac joint start to loosen and that allows the pelvic outlet to start to widen somewhat.. During childbirth the fetus passes through the maternal pelvic opening. The female pelvis is larger and broader. The male pelvis is taller,narrower,and more compact. The female inlet is larger and is oval in shape. The male inlet is more heart-shaped. The sides of the male pelvis converge from the inlet to the outlet, where as the sides of the female pelvis are wider apart. The distance between the ischia bones are small in males and that makes the outlet narrow. In females they are large and that makes the outlet large. The greater sciatic notch are wider in females. Iliac crests are higher and are more pronounced in males . This makes the male pelvis deeper and narrower and more narrow than in females.
The male sacrum is long, narrow, more straight and it has a pronounced sacral promontory. The female sacrum is shorter, wider, more curved posteriorly and it has a less pronounced promontory. The acetabula are wider apart in females than in males. The acetabulum in males faces more laterally. In females it faces more anteriorly. In women the leg must swing forward and inward and when a man walks the leg can move forwards and backwards in a single plane.