Ascending cervical artery

Artery: Ascending cervical artery
Superficial dissection of the right side of the neck, showing the carotid and subclavian arteries. (Ascending cervical artery labeled vertically at center. Difficult to see label, but it is visible right underneath the only major vein on the diagram.)
Latin	arteria cervicalis ascendens
Gray's	subject #148 581
Source	Thyrocervical trunk
Dorlands / Elsevier	a_61/12153830

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

The ascending cervical artery is a small branch which arises from the inferior thyroid as that vessel is passing behind the carotid sheath; it runs up on the anterior tubercles of the transverse processes of the cervical vertebræ in the interval between the Scalenus anterior and Longus capitis.

To the muscles of the neck it gives twigs which anastomose with branches of the vertebral, and it sends one or two spinal branches into the vertebral canal through the intervertebral foramina to be distributed to the medulla spinalis and its membranes, and to the bodies of the vertebræ, in the same manner as the spinal branches from the vertebral.

It anastomoses with the ascending pharyngeal and occipital arteries.

External links

• Ascending+cervical+artery at eMedicine Dictionary

This article was originally based on an entry from a public domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. As such, some of the information contained herein may be outdated. Please edit the article if this is the case, and feel free to remove this notice when it is no longer relevant.