The chest
Lymph from the lungs flows towards the root of each lung, through nodes inside the lung, where the right and left main bronchus enter it, and under the fork of the trachea. From there it climbs through the nodes between the lungs, beside the windpipe, towards the venous angles.
The tracheobronchial and bronchopulmonary nodes round the fork of the trachea and the paratracheal nodes above, seen from behind, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 622Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray622.png)
Macrophages in the lungs swallow inhaled dust and soot and carry it to these nodes, where it stays for life. In city dwellers and smokers the nodes turn grey or black. A lung cancer spreads along the same route, and which of these nodes hold tumour decides how it is treated.
Sources
- Susan Standring (ed.), Gray's Anatomy, 42nd ed. (2020), chapters on the pleura, lungs, trachea and bronchi and on the mediastinum.
- Henry Gray, Anatomy of the Human Body, 20th ed. (1918), section VIII, The Lymphatics of the Thorax.
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