Okay, so this is a tutorial on the celiac artery.
So I'm going to talk you through the various branches of the celiac artery in this tutorial.
I'm just going to get rid of the venous system and we'll just look at the arterial system.
We'll focus in on the celiac artery.
So we're looking now just at the arterial system and we're focusing on the abdominal
section of the aorta.
The celiac trunk is the first anterior branch of the abdominal aorta, which supplies the
foregut structures.
It's just after the aorta perforates the diaphragm at the level of the upper border of the L1
vertebra.
So I've just brought some other structures in for reference.
You can see the aorta piercing the diaphragm and the celiac trunk just after this point.
This is at the level of the upper border of lumber vertebra L1.
So the celiac trunk has three branches.
You've got the left gastric branch, which is this branch here going upwards.
And then you've got the splenic branch, the splenic artery coming off going towards the
spleen to the left.
And you've got the common hepatic artery.
So those are the three branches that come off the celiac trunk.
So the celiac artery, for some reason, on this model, it's in blue.
I can't change that unfortunately, but it is meant to be red here, so just try and ignore
that.
So if I zoom in a little further, you might be wondering what these two little arteries
here are.
These are actually the inferior phrenic arteries.
Their origin is very variable.
So they can arise above the celiac trunk or they can arise from a common trunk either
above the origin of the celiac artery or from the celiac artery itself.
So these are the inferior phrenic artery which supply the diaphragm and they have a variable
origin.
So ignore these for this tutorial.
We're just going to focus on the branches, the left gastric, the splenic and the common
hepatic artery.
So now I'm just going to switch over to some nice diagram to illustrate the branching of
these branches.
Just to orientate a bit, we're looking at the abdominal aorta as it's just passed through
the diaphragm and we've got the celiac trunk coming off immediately after that.
And you can see it's three branches -- the left gastric, the splenic and the common hepatic.
To the right, we've got a dissected liver.
So we've got a little bit of the left lobe of the liver up here and the gallbladder is
revealed because the liver has been pulled away.
On the left, we've got the spleen and we've got the inferior vena cava system to the right
of the aorta.
So first, we'll talk about the left gastric artery.
So we've got the celiac trunk here and the first artery coming off here is this artery
called the left gastric.
This artery ascends and it continues upwards here and gives off esophageal branches to
the distal part of the esophagus.
And then you can see how the artery then sharply curves around like this.
It runs along the lesser curvature of the stomach and it gives off these branches which
supply the surface of the stomach.
So the left gastric artery gives off this little branch here.
And you can see this anastomoses with another branch here.
So the word anastomose just means 'joins together'.
So this artery another artery essentially, which comes off another part of the branch
of the celiac artery.
You could probably guess the name of this artery.
This is the right gastric artery and this anastomoses with the left gastric artery to
form this nice little arch, which sits on the surface of the lesser curvature of the
stomach and the right gastric artery comes off the common hepatic artery or the proper
hepatic artery.
It's fairly variable in its origin.
So fairly straightforward so far.
The left gastric artery is the smallest branch and it ascends upwards and gives off esophageal
branches, which supply the distal esophagus and then it curves around on the lesser curvature
of the stomach and anastomoses with the right gastric artery, which comes off the common
hepatic artery, which I'll come on to talk about.
So I've shown you the vessels which run along the lesser curvature of the stomach, but you
can also see that there's a vessel here which runs along the greater curvature of the stomach.
So like the vessel, which runs along the lesser curvature, this vessel is composed of two
vessels which anastomose.
The first vessel I'm going to talk about is the left gastroepiploic artery and this comes
off the splenic artery, which is the next branch of the celiac trunk.
So what I'm going to do is we're going to switch to another diagram now and we're going
to flip the stomach up.
we're going to take the stomach and flip it over to the top and we're going to look at
the splenic artery and we'll be able to see the pancreas below.
So we've just flipped the stomach up and this is the posterior surface of the stomach.
And just to orientate again, left gastric artery coming off and you can see its sharp
curve round with this branch that runs along the lesser curvature anastomosing with the
right gastric artery coming off the common hepatic or the proper hepatic.
And then we've got the splenic artery and it's got this long tortuous course.
You can see this vessel given off called the left gastroepiploic artery, which is what
we saw in the previous diagram running along the greater curvature.
So remember the stomach is flipped up so the greater curvature is up here.
So just like the left gastric and the right gastric artery which anastomose on the inferior
curvature of the stomach, the left gastroepiploic artery anastomoses with the right gastroepiploic
artery, which comes of the gastroduodenal branch, which I'll talk about soon.
And hopefully, it will all come together and be clear.
So the splenic artery is the largest branch of the celiac trunk.
You can see it's got this long tortuous course and it runs along the top of the pancreas.
And you can see these little branches given off to the pancreas.
And these little branches supply the neck, the body and the tail of the pancreas.
The head has a different supply, which I'll show you in a moment.
So just before the splenic artery enters the hilum of the spleen, it gives off some short
vessels which are called the short gastric arteries.
And this supplies the fundus of the stomach.
So you can see these vessels coming off here and this area of the stomach, the fundus.
We've got the splenic artery with its branches supplying the neck, the body and the tail
of the pancreas.
And then just before it enters the hilum of the spleen, we've got the short gastric arteries,
which supply the fundus of the stomach.
And then we've got this branch given off called the left gastroepiploic artery.
And this anastomoses with the right gastroepiploic artery.
It runs along the greater curvature of the stomach.