hello all this is dr. Alsup again and we will get to discuss most of the external carotid
artery branches in this discussion of arteries recall that the external carotid artery is the
primary source of blood to the face as well as the superficial head now it typically has eight
branches we are going to identify seven of the eight all except for the little ascending
pharyngeal artery which is typically quite difficult to see in this dissection we'll see a little
bit of it in the pharynx and larynx session so let's get started with what is typically the first
branch of the external carotid and you will see it branching off right here and this is going to
be the superior thyroid you can see it branching closer closer to where that common carotid artery
bifurcates into the internal carotid and the external carotid and I know this is external
carotid mainly because I see a branch coming off of it and of course the internal carotid
artery does not give off any branches in the neck the superior thyroid is an anterior branch and it
descends to the thyroid gland as you can see here and it gives off the superior laryngeal
artery which I am outlining right there which accompanies the internal branch of the superior
laryngeal artery excuse me the superior laryngeal nerve through the thyrohyoid membrane and it will
supply that laryngeal area superior to the vocal folds you can see it here as well this is going
to be the superior thyroid that's going to descend towards the superior portion of the thyroid gland
this will be the superior laryngeal artery and you can really see a nice clear view of it piercing
through the thyrohyoid membrane the lingual and facial arteries are also anterior branches of the
external carotid artery these are typically the largest branches other than the maxillary artery
the facial are may come off from a common branch with the lingual artery which is exactly what is
happening here you can see a common branch then you will see it extending this way this will be
the lingual artery the lingual are the lingual will usually be the inferior and this right here
will be the facial artery so facial odor is going to be the superior one the lingual artery will be
inferior you can see that lingual artery it's diving deep to the hyoglosses muscle which is
right in this region this is going to be that mylohyoid muscle we'll talk about more in more
detail in the oral cavity session but this is going to supply the lingual artery supply the
majority of the floor of the mouth the facial artery traverses the submandibular triangle so
it's considered a content of this triangle and it emerges over the body of the mandible as you
can see in this particular image here so you can see it kind of heading up over the mandible if the
masseter was in this image though you can see a little bit of it right here it's gonna kind
of go over that masseter it's going to travel with the facial vein and it will they send and
supply the structures of the face so you can see facial artery here and you can see it's starting
to split off into some of its branches that will talk about more detail in the next session the
posterior auricular and occipital arteries are some of the smaller branches of the external
carotid the occipital artery has to travel all the way back towards the occipital region so it's
going to be the more posterior one so this is your occipital this will be your posterior auricular
the posterior auricular will continue to supply regions around the posterior ear it also supplies
some of the muscles that are in this region including the posterior belly of the digastric
and superior portions of the sternocleidomastoid the maxillary and superficial temporal arteries
are the terminal branches of the external carotid artery so it will stop here the met
excuse me the maxillary artery okay I apologize let me bring that pin back up so that maxillary
artery is going to be considerably larger than the superficial temporal but we can only see a
very small portion right here so this is going to be the maxillary artery you can only see a
small portion because we'd have to do a much deeper dissection like we'll see in the import
import fossa to see the bulk of the maxillary artery and we're going to spend a considerable
amount of time because this is really important in terms of supplying the deep face region the
proximal portions of the superficial temporal is actually located within the parotid gland and then
you can actually see the distal portions of this artery extending superior to the parotid gland
so here's your parotid gland right here and you can see the superficial temporal artery here the
superficial temporal vein and the auricular temporal kind of right in the middle right
there all right so that is seven out of the eight external carotid artery branches we will explore
the facial artery and some of its branches in a bit more detail in the next session the
face session please let me know if you have any questions and thank you for your time