Abducens Nerve - "Abducens" and "Abducent"

"Abducens" and "Abducent"

The Latin name for the sixth cranial nerve is nervus abducens. The Terminologia Anatomica officially recognizes two different English translations: abducent nerve and abducens nerve. Either term is correct.

“Abducens” is more common in recent literature, while “abducent” predominates in the older literature. The United States National Library of Medicine uses “abducens nerve” in its Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) vocabulary to index the vast MEDLINE and PubMed biomedical databases. The 39th edition of Gray’s Anatomy (2005) also prefers “abducens nerve.”