Neurovasculature of the Upper Limb (Nursing)

00:01 Now, let's talk about the blood supply. We started off with the right subclavian artery which change names when it reached the axilla to become the axillary artery then after it gave those last branches, the anterior and posterior circumflex arteries, it changed names again to become the brachial artery.

00:22 And the brachial artery is going to give off branches along the way including deep branches to reach stuff like the triceps so we have deep brachial artery.

00:32 And then, it's going to branch again distally into appropriately names radial and ulnar arteries on their respective sides of the forearm and a very useful feature is that they will combine again at something called the palmar arch. When two arteries come together and connect again, we call that an anastomosis and it provides what we call collateral supply which is very important.

00:59 For example, let's say for some reason the radial artery was to be blocked by some sort of obstruction.

01:06 Well, that means everything distal to it that's supplied in the hand would eventually not have oxygen and die.

01:13 Fortunately, there's what we call collateral supply from the palmar arch which also is receiving blood from the ulnar artery so these situations are very important clinically and we're very lucky to have them.

01:28 The nerves of the upper limb all come from the brachial plexus and those initial spinal nerves that do a lot of combining and recombining to eventually form named nerves that innervate the upper limb.

01:42 The first one we saw in the arm was the musculocutaneous nerve doing the anterior compartment of the arm's muscles but also providing cutaneous innervation of the skin.

01:54 We had that radial nerve doing the posterior compartment for us.

01:58 We've mentioned the ulnar nerve and the median nerve for all the things they do in the hand.