Situs solitus

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The heart and lungs, from an older edition of  Gray's Anatomy.
The heart and lungs, from an older edition of Gray's Anatomy.

Situs solitus refers to the normal position of thoracic and abdominal organs. Anatomically, this means that the heart is on the left with the pulmonary atrium on the right and the systemic atrium on the left along with the cardiac apex. Right-sided organs are the liver, the gall bladder, a trilobed lung, and inferior vena cava, while left-sided organs are the stomach, single spleen, a bilobed lung, and the aorta.

Variants on the normal picture are relatively uncommon. Complete reversal of all organs is known as situs inversus, while reversal of some organs but not others is called situs ambiguus or heterotaxy. Isolated reversal of the heart with normally-patterned viscera otherwise is termed dextrocardia.

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