Arterial Supply of the Head

00:01 Now let's take a look at the arterial supply of the head.

00:08 The majority of the supply is going to be coming from branches of the common carotid artery.

00:14 As in a sense, it will eventually bifurcate.

00:18 And as soon as it does, there's this widening, as it becomes the internal carotid which will continue on into the cranial cavity.

00:26 This widening is called the carotid sinus.

00:30 And it's an important landmark because this is where we have baroreceptors.

00:35 Baroreceptors are receptors that sense of pressure, and this is something that's going to help us maintain our overall sense of blood pressure.

00:43 The other branch at this bifurcation is called the external carotid.

00:47 And unlike the internal carotid, it's going to give rise to a lot of branches that supply the head and neck area.

00:55 One of those branches will go and supply the thyroid gland called the superior thyroid.

01:00 One will go off to the tongue that will be the lingual.

01:04 Another will be more superficial over the face called the facial.

01:09 One will go posteriorly towards the occipital area as the occipital artery.

01:14 One behind the ear, hence the name posterior auricular.

01:19 And then it will eventually reach the superficial temporal, which will fan out across the temporal area.

01:27 A small one, ascends along the pharynx called the ascending pharyngeal artery.

01:34 Now if we zoom in a little bit more, we can see one of the other branches right as the external carotid ends in the superficial temporal and one of those last branches of the maxillary artery.

01:48 And it has a lot of important branches such as the middle meningeal artery which is going to go up and supply the meninges.

01:56 We have more temporal arteries, here we have the anterior and posterior deep temporal arteries.

02:03 We also have the inferior alveolar artery that's going to go into the mandibular canal along with the inferior alveolar nerve.

02:11 We have the buccal artery going to the cheek area.

02:16 The posterior superior alveolar artery for the upper teeth, the infraorbital artery that's going to emerge out of the infraorbital foramen.

02:25 The descending palatine artery for the palate.

02:31 The face is going to have a very rich blood supply and most of its going to come from the facial artery.

02:36 It's going to have superior and inferior labial arteries around the lips.

02:42 Lateral nasal artery around the nose and angular artery going towards the angle between the nose and the medial aspect of the eyes.

02:51 Among many other branches.