Blood Supply – Overview of Arterial Supply to Upper Limb

00:01 In this lecture, we’re going to look at the blood supply to the upper limb. So really, it’s going to be an overview of the blood supply. We’ll look at the blood supply to the axilla, the arm, the forearm, and the hand. We’ll look at the axillary artery, its three divisions, and the various branches. We’ll look at the brachial artery and its branches. We’ll look at the ulnar and radial arteries, the branches that come off this.

00:27 And also the anastomosis they formed around the elbow. We’ll then look at the blood supply to the hand and the superficial and deep palmar arches, how they’re formed from the radial and ulnar arteries, and how they give rise to blood vessels that supply the digits. So here, we can see we have a nice overview of the blood supply to the upper limb in this diagram. It is a right upper limb and we’re looking at the anterior surface.

00:56 We can see that each upper limb is supplied with arterial blood that is coming primarily from either the left or the right subclavian artery. So here we can see above the clavicle, we have the subclavian artery. And on the left-hand side, this is a direct branch of the aortic arch, and on the right side, it’s the bifurcation of the brachiocephalic trunk. The principle artery or arteries of the axilla are going to be axillary artery which we can see here.

01:28 The axillary artery as we know is the direct continuation of the subclavian artery.

01:34 And then it passes down into the arm as the brachial artery. And then this divides in the forearm to the radial and ulnar arteries. And then when we pass into the hand, we can see we have these deep and superficial palmar arteries. So, all of these blood vessels are originating from the subclavian artery. It passes down into the axillary artery which then becomes the brachial artery. The brachial artery then bifurcates into radial and ulnar arteries, and here, we have those superficial and deep palmar arteries. So we can look at the details of all of these blood vessels.