Arterial Supply of the Foot

00:01 Now let's look at the blood supply to the foot.

00:05 If we carry on with the anterior tibial artery, we see it supplies the dorsum of the foot.

00:11 Halfway between the two malleoli, the anterior tibial artery as it then crosses over the tassel bones, supplies the dorsal pedis artery.

00:19 As it does this, it gives rise to a lateral and a medial tarsal artery that goes on to supply the tarsals and the joint capsules around all of those bones.

00:28 From the medial tarsal artery, there's a connection to the lateral tarsal artery, which forms this anastomotic loop.

00:35 This is known as the arcuate artery.

00:37 And this forms a nice anastomoses between these two blood vessels.

00:40 Again, ensuring if there's redundancy, you have that compensation there.

00:45 The dorsalis pedis artery continues forward running alongside the lateral aspect of the first metatarsal as the deep plantar artery.

00:54 There's also the first dorsal metatarsal artery that runs within this space similarly.

00:59 But coming forward from the arcuate arteries, there's then a series of metatarsal arteries that run to the second, third, and fourth dorsal metatarsals.

01:08 And these arteries run in this direction distally towards the digits.

01:13 We also have a series of perforating arteries that run deep through the substance of the muscles, the interossei muscles that align between these metatarsals, and they'll form an important anastomotic loop as we'll see in a moment.

01:27 Coming from these though, we also have dorsal digital arteries that supply the dorsal surface of our distal digits.

01:35 If we then turn to look at the sole of the foot, we can see we have our posterior tibial artery, which is now entering from this medial aspect, the sole of the foot.

01:44 And it gives rise to both the medial and the lateral plantar arteries.

01:48 Here we can see connecting those two is another anastomotic loop similar to the arcuate artery we saw a moment ago, and this is the deep plantar arch.

01:58 The deeper plantar arch will give rise to the deep plantar artery that goes forwards towards the great toe.

02:04 Then we've got a series of plantar metatarsal arteries that come off it to supply the sole surface of these metatarsals.

02:11 We then have the various digital branches that supply the digits.

02:16 Importantly, we have those perforating arteries, which are now consistent with those perforating arteries that come from the dorsum of the foot to form this anastomotic loop of blood vessels supplying the foot, both from the sole and from the dorsal aspect.

02:31 So there's lots of blood vessels that form a couple of complicated anastomoses around the posterior thigh, the gluteal region and the hip joint, and also around the foot and the knee.

02:41 So make sure you're familiar with the blood distribution around the lower limb.