Abstract
The sciatic nerve, the largest (thickest) nerve of the body, is formed by the union of the anterior primary rami of the spinal nerves of L4, L5, S1, S2, S3, and S4 (lumbosacral plexus). The sacral plexus lies deep within the pelvis between the piriformis muscle posteriorly and the pelvis fascia anteriorly. After exiting the pelvis through the greater sciatic foramen, the sciatic nerve enters the subgluteal space between the gluteus maximus muscle posteriorly and the quadratus femoris muscle anteriorly. Thereafter it descends in an intermuscular fascial plane on the posterior aspect of the thigh, lying deep to the semitendinosus and biceps femoris muscles, to about its lower third, where it bifurcates into its two branches, the tibial and common peroneal (fibular) nerves.
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Acknowledgments
The anatomic images (Figs. 18.7, 18.8, 18.20, and 18.26) are courtesy of the Visible Human Server at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Visible Human Visualization Software (http://visiblehuman.epfl.ch). All other figures were reproduced with kind permission from http://www.aic.cuhk.edu.hk/usgraweb.
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Karmakar, M.K. (2015). High-Definition and Three-Dimensional Volumetric Ultrasound Imaging of the Sciatic Nerve. In: Reina, M., De Andrés, J., Hadzic, A., Prats-Galino, A., Sala-Blanch, X., van Zundert, A. (eds) Atlas of Functional Anatomy for Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09522-6_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09522-6_18
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