5. Palpation of the sutures:

Do not use your fingertips for palpation, but the front part of the finger that is placed on the tissue, giving you a greater area of perception. The sutures can be perceived as a fine furrow (groove), or sometimes (less often) as a protrusion. Some sutures are covered by soft tissue and can therefore hardly be felt.

-        coronal suture: Palpate with both fingers from the forehead posterior until you perceive a fine furrow (groove, channel) or less often a protrusion. You follow this from medial to lateral until about 2 finger’s width posterior of the lateral edge of the eye.

-        In the middle of the coronal suture is a little indentation, Bregma.

Bregma is about the same distance from the hairline as the hairline is from the eyebrow.

-        From Bregma you palpate posteriorly along the sagittal suture.

-        At the end of the sagittal suture you palpate an indentation at the back of the skull: Lamda.

-        About to finger’s width posterior to Bregma, on the sagittal suture lies vertex, the highest point of the skull.

-        Now palpate Asterion, the joining point of the occipital bone, the parietal bone and the temporal bone, which is located about 2 finger’s width behind and 1 to 2 finger’s width above the ear’s hole (concha). Asterion is a fairly mobile zone, compared to Pterion.

-        The connecting line between Asterion and Lambda is the lamdoid suture

-        Palpate the occipito-mastoid suture caudally from Asterion along the posterior ridge of the mastoid portion.