Lymphatic Vascular System: Briefly Mentioned But Seldom "Talked" About

Unfortunately, the lymphatic vascular system is a grossly understudied area of the human body. Therefore, we know very little about the interworkings of the human lymphatic vascular system. It is the starting and ending place of many diseases, such as Primary Lymphedema and cancer. Speaking with several US medical school gross anatomy professors, the lymphatic vascular system is pretty much ignored in teaching. This is not a knock at US medical school education, it is just that there is little known about it and it is not visible on the surface of the human body like the blood vascular system. Upon dissection, its anatomy is not easily visible even with the use of colored dyes. So one can understand how easy it is to gloss over this system. To be fair to medical schools, the lymphatic vascular system is also glossed over in biomedical graduate programs in the US. Even those programs that focus on the lymphatic system as the core of their program, basically ignore the vascular component of the system. Again, this is not to knock US biomedical graduate programs. For those of you who are in or teach non-US medical and biomedical programs, how is this system being addressed?

For more information about the Lymphatic Vascular System please click here.