Splenic nodes

At a glance

English

Splenic nodes

Latin (TA2)

Nodi splenici

System

Lymphatic

Region

Trunk

Side

Single, on the midline

About the splenic nodes

The splenic nodes sit in the upper left part of the abdomen, where the splenic artery and vein enter and leave the spleen at its hilum. Some lie a little further medially, against the tail of the pancreas, and for that reason older texts call them the pancreaticosplenic nodes. They are embedded in the fat of the ligaments that hold the spleen, chiefly the splenorenal ligament, which carries the splenic vessels and the pancreatic tail.

These nodes are part of the coeliac system of lymphatic drainage, the network that serves the organs supplied by the coeliac trunk. They form an early station on the left side of that network, between the organs of the left upper abdomen and the larger nodes gathered around the coeliac trunk itself.

Lymph reaches them from three neighbours: the spleen, the left part of the stomach (the fundus and the upper greater curvature, through vessels running in the gastrosplenic ligament) and the body and tail of the pancreas. From the splenic nodes the flow passes along the splenic artery to the pancreatic nodes above and below the gland and to the omental nodes, then onward to the coeliac nodes. From the coeliac group lymph enters the intestinal trunk and the cisterna chyli at the start of the thoracic duct.

Clinically the group matters mostly in cancer of the upper stomach and of the pancreatic tail. Tumour cells from either organ may settle here early, and surgeons may remove the nodes at the splenic hilum when they perform an extended gastrectomy, sometimes taking the spleen with them. The nodes may also enlarge in lymphoma and in infections of the spleen or upper abdomen, when they can show on a scan as a mass at the hilum.

Course and drainage

Begins at

Afferent vessels from the spleen, the fundus and upper greater curvature of the stomach, and the body and tail of the pancreas.

Drains into

Efferent vessels run to the superior and inferior pancreatic nodes and the omental nodes, then to the coeliac nodes and the cisterna chyli.

Drains

Filters lymph from the spleen, the left part of the stomach and the pancreatic tail. An early landing site for spread of upper gastric and pancreatic tail cancer, cleared in extended gastric surgery.