Vascular Supply of the Liver and Gallbladder

00:01 Let's have a quick look at the blood supply to the gallbladder.

00:04 Its arterial supply is predominantly via the cystic artery.

00:08 But how do we get to the cystic artery? Well, the liver is part of the foregut.

00:13 And therefore the gallbladder is also part of the foregut, which means it's going to be supplied by the celiac trunk.

00:19 The celiac trunk has an important branch one of those three we spoke about.

00:23 We're interested in the common hepatic artery, and we can see the common hepatic artery heads towards the liver.

00:30 On its way to the liver, it gives rise to the cystic artery that passes towards the gallbladder and supplies its surface.

00:37 As the hepatic artery continues, it will give rise to the right and left hepatic arteries that we're familiar with to go and supply the substance of the liver.

00:47 Here we can see the inferior vena cava has now been introduced into the image.

00:53 And that's important because of actually the vascular composition of the liver.

00:57 The liver is a complex organ.

01:00 It receives blood by the hepatic artery proper, the common hepatic artery, which accounts for around about 30% of its blood volume.

01:08 That is important to maintain the function of the organ, just like every other organ in the body.

01:14 It needs a highly oxygenated blood supply.

01:17 So the cells, the hepatocytes within the liver can actually perform their function.

01:22 But the function of the liver is to help process and to clean and to decontaminate and to prepare all of that ingested food so it's ready to be effectively used by the body.

01:34 It does this by receiving the hepatic portal vein and that makes up a lot more of the composition of the blood.

01:41 So more blood receiving going into the liver.

01:45 The liver receives is much more predominantly from the hepatic portal vein.

01:51 Once the liver has received both of those supplies of blood, so from the hepatic portal vein, and also the hepatic artery proper, the blood is now needing to go back to the heart and how does blood return to the heart by way of the inferior vena cava.

02:08 Draining from the liver to the inferior vena cava, we have the hepatic vein which we can see here.

02:14 So the hepatic veins are just like any ordinary vein, draining blood from an organ.

02:20 They happen to be from the liver, so they're hepatic veins.

02:24 It's important though to distinguish the hepatic veins, draining blood from the liver, into the inferior vena cava with the hepatic portal vein that is taking nutrient rich but poorly oxygenated blood from the gastrointestinal tract for it to be processed by the liver.