Clinical and Surgical Anatomy of the Neck

Introduction: to bring relevance on morphological details pertaining to medical and surgical applicability and demonstrate its value as an unavoidable mainstay for diagnosis and mangement of head and neck pathology.Materials and method: a. standarized dissections, of preserved adult human corpses, to obtain anatomical pieces for teaching purposes in school of medicine, axial slices and its comparative study with computed tomography (CT) images. b.application of normalized surgical techniques and procedures. C. clinical cases, from Public and Community hospitals for tertiary care of head and neck pathology, evaluated and treated between 1982 and 2012. The design of the article was retrospective and observational.Results: the endocervical layered system outlines compartments and detachable templates that are useful in anatomic and surgical dissection. The lymphatic system was realigned into seven levels placed into the anterior and posterior main cervical triangles.This issue shifted the extension and terminology of surgical neck dissections. The lymphatic mapping theory was incorporated for selective excision of sentinel lymphatic node in cases of regional mucosal and epithelial tumors. In order to evaluate damage after trauma and to consider the appropiate surgical approach, the neck was divided in three zones. According to that division, twelve slice levels were described with the equivalent images at CT. Emphasis was given to ten landmarks for anatomical and surgical dissection.Conclusions: neck anatomy was revisited to focus on new trends about selective treatments and surgical approaches. The assessment through slices and CT gives another perspective over the central compartment, the arrangement of the endocervical layered system, the vascular space and the transitional areas.