The rib cage is made up of 12 pairs of ribs attached to the thoracic spine and protects vital organs. The upper 10 pairs are attached to the front of the body via cartilage, while the 11th and 12th pairs are “floating” ribs. The rib cage is not entirely made of bone to allow for flexibility in breathing. Fractured ribs can cause injury to organs in the chest cavity.
The rib cage is also known as the rib cage. It is made up of 12 pairs of ribs attached to the back of the body via 12 vertebrae known as the thoracic spine, a part of the spine located just below the cervical spine or neck. The protection of vital organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and stomach is an extremely important function of the rib cage.
Only the upper 10 pairs of ribs are attached to the front or front of the body. As the top seven pairs curve around the sides to the front, each rib encounters a thin piece of cartilage, a very tough but flexible tissue. That cartilage extends to where it attaches to the breastbone, commonly referred to as the sternum.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth pairs also wrap around the front of the body, but the cartilage that connects them to the breastbone is shared instead of being individual pieces. There is no anterior attachment of the 10th and 11th pair of ribs, which is why they are commonly referred to as “floating” ribs. Illustrations and an X-ray of the anterior rib cage might show only part of the 11th pair of ribs, and the 12th pair tends to be so short that it won’t show at all except from a lateral or posterior view of the body.
The costal cartilage that connects the pairs of ribs to the sternum prevents the entire rib cage from being made of bone. This is important because breathing depends on the expansion and contraction of the chest cavity and the bone is too hard to allow for the flexibility in the chest cavity needed to be able to breathe. The shape of the rib cage is referred to as a cage because it encloses most of the torso, and the pairs of ribs create the appearance of cage-like bars.
The layman should not expect to be able to palpate the floating pairs of ribs or the rib cartilage that is part of the rib cage. A fracture of any part of the ribs can cause extreme discomfort and injury to the organs in the chest cavity. For example, car accidents can cause a person’s chest to be compressed suddenly and very forcefully against the steering wheel, causing one or more ribs to fracture which could stab the heart, lung, liver or stomach and cause hemorrhage internal .
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