Anatomy & Physiology Required for Medical Coding (CPC & CCS)

Explore the musculoskeletal system as the body's framework for movement, covering bones, joints, muscles, cartilage, tendons, ligaments, and connective tissue. Identify bones by region: head, upper body, arms, pelvis, legs.

Explore how the musculoskeletal system provides structural support, protection for organs, blood cell production, mineral storage, and leverage for movement. Adults have 206–213 bones, divided into axial and appendicular skeletons.

Explore the three bone shapes—short, flat, and sesamoid—and how their structures support stability, protection, and muscle pull, with examples like carpals, tarsals, skull, ribs, pelvis, patella, and sesamoids.

Explore how skeletal, smooth, and cardiac muscles enable movement and posture. Learn how joints, cartilage, ligaments, and tendons stabilize motion and transmit force in everyday movement.

Dive into the spine and spinal cord, vertebral protection, and regional nerves, and review fractures, osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel, rotator cuff tears, and degenerative disc disease with key terms.

Explore tendonitis, its inflammation from overuse, and common surgical options—fracture repair, arthroscopy, joint replacement, tendon/ligament repair, and spine surgery—plus medical terminology.

Explore the nervous system as the body's control and communication network that senses, processes, and responds to stimuli with rapid electrical impulses across the central and peripheral nervous systems.

Explore the brain's major regions—the cerebrum lobes, cerebellum for balance, and brainstem autopilot—plus how the spinal cord's 31 nerves (C1 to CO1) transmit movement and sensation.

Explore how neurons transmit nerve signals through soma, dendrites, axon, myelin, and synapses. Learn how cerebrospinal fluid and the meninges protect the brain and spinal cord.

Explore the peripheral nervous system as the brain and spinal cord's link to the body, detailing the somatic system for voluntary movement and the autonomic system's sympathetic and parasympathetic roles.

Explore the five functions of the nervous system—sensing, integration, motor, balance, and higher activities—and how clinicians diagnose conditions using EEG, EMG, MRI, CT, sleep study, and more.

an overview of the endocrine system, a network of glands that release hormones into the bloodstream to regulate growth, metabolism, mood, reproduction, and homeostasis, with the hypothalamus guiding hormone release.

Explore how the hypothalamus regulates body temperature, hunger, thirst, and the sleep-wake cycle, and orchestrates pituitary control to influence growth, metabolism, and reproduction.

Study the pituitary gland, the master gland at the brain base with anterior and posterior lobes, regulating growth, thyroid activity, stress, reproduction, water balance, and childbirth.

Summarize pituitary disorders, including tumors and growth hormone excess causing acromegaly or gigantism, plus Cushing's disease, with vision changes and hormone imbalances, and thyroid function and disorders.

The parathyroid glands regulate calcium via parathyroid hormone, supporting bone health, with the adrenal glands consisting of cortex and medulla that manage long-term stress, blood pressure, and fight-or-flight responses.

Explore the pineal gland, ovaries, and testes, detailing the pineal's location and melatonin's role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, and ovaries' hormone production and ovulation.

Examine ovarian disorders, cysts, cancer, and ovarian failure, their symptoms and hormone roles including estrogen, progesterone, and inhibin; then review testes functions and pineal melatonin in sleep timing.

Explore core endocrine terminology and concepts essential for medical coding, including glands such as pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, parathyroid; hormones, regulation, disorders, and related terms.

Explore the heart and the cardiovascular system as the body's 24-7 delivery network, transporting oxygen, nutrients, and hormones through blood vessels, while removing waste.

Understand how tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, and aortic valves regulate one-way blood flow and how coronary arteries nourish the heart as blood travels from body to heart to lungs to body.

Explore heart diseases such as coronary artery disease, heart failure, cardiomyopathies, arrhythmias, and valvular disorders, and learn how clinicians diagnose them with echocardiography, radiography, computed tomography, angiography, and stress testing.

Master cardiovascular terminology by learning root words such as cardi, myo, endo, epi, and peri, plus speed terms brady and tachy, and heart structures like atria, ventricles, and aorta.

Explore how the digestive system ingests, breaks down food, absorbs nutrients, and eliminates waste. Learn GI tract from mouth to anus and the roles of the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas.

Trace digestion from mouth to anus. Understand how the small and large intestines absorb nutrients and water, and learn about common conditions like acid reflux, celiac disease, constipation, and diverticulitis.

Explore the internal male reproductive organs, including the epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, and urethra, and how fluids with fructose support sperm maturation, transport, and survival.

Explore the respiratory system, from inhaling oxygen to exhaling carbon dioxide, with gas exchange in the alveoli, lung lobes, and the airway pathway from nose to trachea.

Explore vertebral segments from cervical to coccygeal, totaling 33 vertebrae (24 movable in adults), and review respiratory combining forms for bronchus, pleura, lung, trachea.