Eleventh rib at a glance
- Also called
- Rib 11
- What it is
- The eleventh rib. A short floating rib with a pointed end and no neck or tubercle.
- Location
- Part of the thoracic cage, curving from the eleventh thoracic vertebra behind around the chest wall toward the front. A floating rib.
- Function
- Protects the thoracic organs and, by moving at its vertebral joints, changes chest volume during breathing.
- Body system
- Skeletal · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA8532 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Its head has a single facet for T11; it does not articulate with a transverse process and its tip lies free in the abdominal wall muscles.
- It has no costal cartilage joining another cartilage; its tip ends in a short cap of cartilage among the abdominal wall muscles.
Clinical relevance
Fractures of the lower ribs can injure the spleen, liver or kidney beneath them.
Structures next to the eleventh rib
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Twelfth rib · skeletal
- Subcostal vein · cardiovascular
- Tenth rib · skeletal
- Subcostal artery · cardiovascular
- Adrenal gland · endocrine
- Inferior suprarenal artery · cardiovascular
- Kidney · urinary
- Suprarenal vein · cardiovascular
- Serratus posterior inferior · muscular
- Middle suprarenal artery · cardiovascular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Eleventh rib (FMA8532). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §7.1 Divisions of the Skeletal System. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.