Palmar Aspect of the Hand

00:01 So, now, we've spoken about the dorsal aspect. Let's turn to the palmar aspect.

00:05 And the palmar aspect is a lot more complicated. There's many more structures on this surface.

00:11 So, if we were to immediately remove the skin, what would you find? Well, situated on the surface of the palmar, of the palmar surface of the hand, we have this palmar fascia and that's quite thin on the periphery.

00:25 So, thin around the hypothenar, the thenar eminence.

00:28 But actually, centrally, it is much thickened and this is known as the palmar aponeurosis.

00:34 The palmar aponeurosis is triangular in shape and it has an apex which is continuous with the palmaris longus tendon.

00:41 So, palmaris muscle, palmaris longus muscle which we mentioned in the forearm lecture, gives rise to this tendon that joints at the apex of the palmar aponeurosis.

00:52 It has this broad base which gives rise to four longitudinal bands that go and situate on the palmar surface of the second to fifth digit.

01:01 This can actually help to divide the palmar surface of the hand into compartments.

01:06 So, here, we have the central compartment which is really situated deep to the palmar aponeurosis.

01:12 Medially, we have the hypothenar eminence and we'll talk about muscles in that space in a moment.

01:19 We also have a thenar eminence and an adductor eminence.

01:23 And these regions are associated with the thumb.

01:26 So, we've got these four compartments within the palm of the hand.

01:29 Thenar eminence, the adductor compartment or adductor eminence, the central part and the hypothenar eminence which we can see there.

01:38 Sitting deep to that central compartment and in between the metacarpals bones of the hand, we have the interosseous muscles. These are the deepest in the palmar aspect and we saw them when we looked at the dorsal aspect of the hand as well.

01:52 And these interosseous muscles, we'll come to towards the end of this lecture.