The buccal artery (buccinator artery) is a small

artery An artery () is a blood vessel in humans and most other animals that takes oxygenated blood away from the heart in the systemic circulation to one or more parts of the body. Exceptions that carry deoxygenated blood are the pulmonary arteries in ...

in the

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

. It branches off the second part of the

maxillary artery The maxillary artery (eg, internal maxillary artery) supplies deep structures of the face. It branches from the external carotid artery just deep to the neck of the mandible. Structure The maxillary artery, the larger of the two terminal branches ...

and supplies the

cheek The cheeks () constitute the area of the face below the eyes and between the nose and the left or right ear. ''Buccal'' means relating to the cheek. In humans, the region is innervated by the buccal nerve. The area between the inside of th ...

and

buccinator muscle The bucinator () is a thin quadrilateral muscle occupying the interval between the maxilla and the Human mandible, mandible at the side of the face. It forms the anterior part of the cheek or the lateral wall of the oral cavity.Illustrated Anatom ...

Course

It runs obliquely forward, between the pterygoideus internus and the insertion of the

temporalis In anatomy, the temporalis muscle, also known as the temporal muscle, is one of the muscles of mastication (chewing). It is a broad, fan-shaped convergent muscle on each side of the head that fills the temporal fossa, superior to the zygomatic ...

, to the outer surface of the

buccinator The bucinator () is a thin quadrilateral muscle occupying the interval between the maxilla and the mandible at the side of the face. It forms the anterior part of the cheek or the lateral wall of the oral cavity.Illustrated Anatomy of the Head an ...

, to which it is distributed, anastomosing with branches of the

facial artery The facial artery, formerly called the external maxillary artery, is a branch of the external carotid artery that supplies blood to superficial structures of the medial regions of the face. Structure The facial artery arises in the carotid t ...

and with the

infraorbital Infraorbital is an anatomical term which means, literally, inferior to (below or beneath) the eye socket (orbit). Some examples of uses of the term are: * Infraorbital artery * Infraorbital foramen * Infraorbital canal * Infraorbital groove * Infr ...

. From the infraorbital area, it descends bilaterally in the superficial face along the lateral margin of the nose, then running anti-parallel to the

across the lateral oral region.

Additional images

file:Gray508.png, The arteries of the face and scalp.

References

External links

* () {{Authority control Arteries of the head and neck