Abdominal Aorta

00:01 Now, let's move on to the abdominal aorta.

00:04 The abdominal aorta passes into the abdominal cavity by passing through the aortic hiatus.

00:11 And remember that's at the level of the 12th thoracic vertebra.

00:15 We can see the abdominal aorta highlighted here passing through the aortic hiatus.

00:21 We can see this indicated at T12, that important opening passage through the diaphragm.

00:27 We can see that the aorta passes all the way down to the 4th lumbar vertebra.

00:34 And here we can see that it actually starts to bifurcate into the two common iliac arteries.

00:41 The two common iliac arteries then split into external and internal iliac arteries.

00:47 The external goes on to supply the lower limb, and the internal supplies the organs of the pelvis.

00:53 If we then look at a whole series of unpaired branches, these are branches that run away anteriorly from the aorta, and we've spoken about them at length in previous videos.

01:06 Here we have the celiac trunk that is going to supply the foregut.

01:09 Here we have the superior mesenteric artery that supplies the midgut.

01:14 And here we have the inferior mesenteric artery that is going to supply the hindgut.

01:19 We then have a number of paired visceral branches.

01:23 So these are branches that go on to supply pieces of viscera, like the kidneys, and they're paired, so they happen on both the left and the right side.

01:32 Here we have the renal arteries, and we have the middle suprarenal arteries going to supply the adrenal glands.

01:39 We also have the paried gonadal arteries that go to supply the testes or the ovaries in the male and female.

01:46 We also have some inferior phrenic arteries, and these are send to go and supply the diaphragm.

01:52 We have a series of lumbar arteries and these run along the posterior abdominal wall to supply the musculature of that region.

02:00 These are known as parietal branches because they don't supply viscera, but they supply parts of the body wall and they're called the paired parietal branches.

02:10 We even have a median sacral artery, as its name suggests here, median, it's in the midline, and we only have one of these.