hello anatomy colleagues it is dr. Alsup here and we will be discussing the arteries pertinent
and visible in a discussion of the pterygopalatine fossa and the palate most of these arteries are
branches of the third part of the maxillary artery but we will have one surprise appearance so let's
start with that one and this is going to be the ascending Palatine artery which is typically
one of the first branches of the facial artery so not the maxillary artery but a branch typically of
the facial artery and this is actually going to be the main supplier of blood to the soft
palate it is typically easiest to locate I'm going to underline the artery it's typically
easiest to locate as it passes between the muscle bellies the levator veli palatini and the
tensor veli palatini but you can see that some very close proximity to the soft palate right
here all the rest of the arteries that we will discuss our branches of the third part of the
maxillary artery so let's spend some time on the other arteries that are going to be focused on
supplying the palate region now in this particular image this is a particularly deep dissection you
do see a bit of the hard palate right here a lot of the soft palate and the muscles in this region
have been removed in order to better see the the contents of the pterygopalatine fossa as well
as the greater Palatine canal so the descending Palatine artery is one of the terminal branches
of the maxillary artery and so this right here is going to be the descending palatine and this
artery will descend as its name would suggest from the tear go Palatine fossa through the
Palatine canal which would be in this general region right here this Palatine canal is often
referred to as the greater Palatine canal and at around the level of the greater Palatine foramen
which would be about in this region there is going to be a name change to the greater Palatine artery
which will run along the hard palate and will be the dominant supply of the of the hard palate so
you're gonna have that greater Palatine artery right around this region now important note some
sources don't differentiate between the greater Palatine or the descending Palatine they will
they will call it one of those names for it's the entire length or throughout the entire pathway
for our purposes within the greater Palatine canal so this particular region that is going
to be the descending Palatine and then once it is gone through the greater Palatine foramen and
on the hard palate region then we're gonna start calling it the greater Palatine artery so if you
see it on the hard palate you're gonna ID it is the greater paletine another artery that we can
see here also traveling with the same name nerve which is hard to differentiate the two I'm gonna
underline it is going to be the artery of the pterygoid canal and this artery is going to be
in a close approximation with the tear go Palatine ganglion which is right here so right smack-dab in
that pterygopalatine fossa and if you have this close Association kind of coming in posterior
from this region and heading towards the pterygopalatine ganglion you're pretty safe to ID this
as the artery of the pterygoid canal it's named that because it travels through the pterygoid
canal to reach this region okay very similar image as we had before but this is actually
a more superficial dissection so we kind of went backwards you can see the valley palatini muscles
right in this region you can see portions of the soft palate and these were removed in that last
image to better show into the tear go Palatine fossa and greater Palatine canal so I have this
particular image in here because I want to show how that neurovasculature
will actually traverse the foramina so you can see the greater Palatine foramen region a little
bit better right here and the greater Palatine framing is going to be at about the level of the
maxillary second molars and the greater Palatine artery will traverse that region and head towards
the hard palate the lesser Palatine arteries and nerves which we'll talk about in another
video will exit through the more posterior lesser Palatine foramina to supply portions of the soft
palate so this is going to be the greater Palatine and these smaller ones will be the lesser Palatine
all right moving to a posterior lateral view of the face and we are looking at an extremely deep
face dissection there are three arteries that I want to identify here and I'm going to start with
one of the largest branches at the third part of the maxillary artery which is your infra orbital
so you can kind of see it moving into this region so what it's doing right here is entering the
inferior orbital fissure and if we move over to this particular image where we're looking
straight into the orbit you can see that it is going to run on the floor and I'm going to kind
of outline it right here it's going to run on the floor of the orbit and the infraorbital groove and
then eventually through the infraorbital canal and in that infraorbital canal it will give off two
branches one is going to be the anterior superior alveoli our alveolar artery which you can actually
see right here where we've opened up the bone in this region to be able to see this branch and it
will also give off the middle superior alveolar artery which is not visible in these images but
will supply regions of the maxillary sinus as well as the canines in the lateral incisor the
infraorbital artery will continue and actually exit the skull through the infraorbital foramen
to supply a little bit of the region around the mid-face so therefore broad artery has quite a
complex and interesting route you can also see the posterior superior alveolar artery which
I'm going to add a line right here to label the posterior superior alveolar artery will typically
arise in the tear go Palatine fossa but actually run back through the tear go maxillary fissure so
kind of backwards and enter into the maxilla so this is your maxilla right here via the alveolar
foramina and this is going to be the dominant supply to those maxillary molars and premolars
lastly we have the sphenoid Palatine artery which is the other terminal branch of the maxillary
artery we don't have a picture of the root or the trunk of the sphenoid Palatine artery it is the
main arterial supply for the mucosa of the nasal cavity and it will fairly quickly divide into
two main sets of branches you're going to have the posterior septal branches of which you can see one
right here so this is going to be a septal branch and I know that because we're looking at the nasal
septum here you can see the vomer bone right here and then over here you can see a posterior lateral
nasal branch which I'm underlining and that's going to be the other main set of branches at
the sphenoid Palatine give off and we're looking at the lateral nasal wall with the contour removed
in this particular image so you can get an idea of where the sphenoid paletine is heading and
where it's sending most of its branches all right these are the arteries in this session there are
quite a few and fortunately they match up fairly nicely with many of the nerves of the same name
so there will be some nice connections there as you review thank you for your time and attention