Location of the pancreas – the pancreas is a whitish-pink, elongated glandular organ located on the back wall of the abdominal cavity, in the retroperitoneum, at the level of the 1st and 2nd lumbar vertebrae.
The pancreashead is its widest part; it is fused by connective tissue with the duodenum and lies in its curve.
The head continues obliquely upwards, from right to left, into the body of the pancreas, which lies in front of the abdominal aorta, and then ends in the tail without any noticeable transition.
Its process curving downwards and to the left is the uncinate process (processus uncinatus), which follows the lower horizontal part of the duodenum.
The pancreasfront surface borders on the junction of the duodenum and small intestine (flexura duodenojejunalis), the small intestine and then, through the
greater omentum stretching between the stomach and the colon (bursa omentalis), the stomachrear surface, the mesentery of the transverse colon (mesocolon transversum) and, below the spleen at the junction of the transverse and descending colon, the left colon flexure (flexura coli sinistra).
The back surface of the head of the gland lies against the right crus of the diaphragm and the inferior vena cava (vena cava inferior).
Behind it, running downwards along its right edge, is the common bile duct(ductus choledochus), which extends to the middle of the descending part of the duodenum (pars descendens duodeni), where the main excretory duct of the gland, the ductus pancreaticus major, joins it; together they enter the duodenum and open into the bowel lumen at the papilla duodeni major (papilla Vateri).
