Femoral hernia The incidence of strangulation in femoral hernias is high. A femoral hernia has often been found to be the cause of unexplained small bowel obstruction. The cough impulse is often absent and is not relied on solely when making a diagnosis of femoral hernia. The lump is more globular than the pear-shaped lump of the inguinal hernia. The bulk of a femoral hernia lies below an imaginary line drawn between the anterior superior iliac spine and the pubic tubercle (which essentially represents the inguinal ligament) whereas an inguinal hernia starts above this line. Nonetheless, it is often impossible to distinguish
Superficial external pudendal artery to the inguinal ligament. Superficial external pudendal artery The superficial external pudendal artery (superficial external pudic artery) is one of the three pudendal arteries. It arises from the medial side of the femoral artery, close to the superficial epigastric artery and superficial iliac circumflex artery. After piercing the femoral sheath and fascia cribrosa, it courses medialward, across the spermatic cord (or round ligament in the female), to be distributed to the integument on the lower part of the abdomen, the penis and scrotum in the male, and the labium majus in the female, anastomosing with branches of the internal pudendal