The Right Lung

Key points

• • It has three lobes (upper, middle and lower) separated by an oblique fissure and a horizontal fissure; the left lung has only two lobes and no horizontal fissure.
• • It is shorter and wider than the left lung because the liver pushes the right dome of the diaphragm higher, and it has no cardiac notch.
• • At the hilum the pulmonary veins are generally the most anterior and the bronchus the most posterior, though the arrangement varies; on the right the upper-lobe (eparterial) bronchus lies above the pulmonary artery.
• • The right main bronchus is wider, shorter and more vertical than the left, so inhaled foreign bodies tend to lodge in the right lung.
• • Its mediastinal surface is marked by grooves for structures against it, including the oesophagus, the azygos vein and the superior vena cava.
• • Each lung is covered by visceral pleura that becomes parietal pleura around the hilum, leaving a loose cuff below it called the pulmonary ligament.