Arterial Supply of the Lower Limbs: Overview

00:01 In this lecture, we're going to look at the arterial supply to the lower limb.

00:07 So let's start by having a look at the various arteries that follow from the bifurcation of the aorta, all the way down both left and right lower limbs, finally to supply the individual digits of your toes.

00:20 So here we can see the bifurcation of the abdominal aorta.

00:24 At approximately the intervertebral disk level of L4 and L5, here we see the common iliac artery.

00:31 And we see it bifurcates into internal and external iliac arteries.

00:35 And here the internal iliac will give rise to the superior and inferior gluteal arteries.

00:42 The internal iliac will then go and supply a lot of the other structures within the pelvis.

00:47 The arbitrate artery is also a branch and that passes through the obturator foramen to supply muscles in the adductor compartment.

00:54 And here we can see the external iliac artery passing deep to the inguinal ligament before becoming the femoral artery that goes to supply the thigh.

01:04 So here we can see the femoral artery that's running down within the thigh.

01:08 We can see it giving rise to the deep artery of the thigh, and then it passes through the adductor hiatus to change his name into the popliteal artery, which we find located within the popliteal fossa.

01:20 So here we can see the popliteal artery passing through the adductor hiatus.

01:25 And the popliteal artery is then going to bifurcate into here, the anterior tibial artery and the posterior tibial artery.

01:33 We can see this now on the posterior view of the knee.

01:37 We can then see the posterior tibial artery running down the posterior aspect of the leg.

01:42 It then runs down onto the sole of the foot where it supplies many of the muscles we have spoken about.

01:48 And it does this by coursing around the medial malleolus of the tibia.

01:52 We can also see the anterior tibial artery and we'll come to specifically how the anterior tibial artery passes through the interosseous membrane between the fibula and tubular to then run down the anterior surface of the leg and go on to supply the dorsum of the foot.