We started talking about directional terms. We introduced the idea of having an axial portion of your body, your head and trunk, and an appendicular portion of your body, your arms and legs. This is where that becomes important. When talking about your appendicular portion of your body or your limbs, we're going to have a different set of directional terms. That set of directional terms is going to be proximal and distal, and proximal and distal is going to refer to the distance to the limb attachment.
In other words, how far down the arm or leg something is. Now first, we have proximal and proximal means closer to the attachment. You can think something that is in close proximity is closer to something. It's closer to the attachment. Now distal means farther from the attachment.
Something that is distal is at a distance from the attachment. So we can look at the arms and legs over here and do a couple of examples. First off, we can pick the elbow, and the elbow will be proximal to the wrist. The elbow is closer to the attachment point than the wrist. The wrist will be distal to the elbow.
The wrist is further from the attachment point than the elbow. We can pick something on the leg. Let's pick the ankle. The ankle will be proximal to the toes. The toes will be distal to the ankle.
Okay. With that in mind, remember, whenever you're doing the arms and legs, try to use proximal and distal. You may be tempted to say superior inferior. So yes, technically, the knee is superior to the ankle, but a better way to say it is proximal. If you're comparing something on the body to an arm and leg, for example, if you're comparing the abdomen to the knee, then you can use that superior inferior.
The abdomen is superior to the knee, but you're usually not comparing things that are that far away. So almost always when talking about the arms and legs, you're going to be using proximal and distal. Okay. With that, try the practice problems below. We'll see you in the next video.
