Anatomy study note · Head and neck

External carotid artery

The artery of the neck, face and scalp (plus tongue and maxilla). It runs from the upper border of the thyroid cartilage to the parotid gland, where it ends behind the neck of the mandible as the superficial temporal and maxillary arteries.

Key points

• 8 branches: superior thyroid, ascending pharyngeal, lingual, facial, occipital, posterior auricular, superficial temporal, maxillary.
• Ends in the parotid behind the mandibular neck.
• Maxillary → middle meningeal (foramen spinosum).
• ECA: bud from the 3rd arch artery.
• Artery: intima / media (smooth muscle) / adventitia.
• Most named arteries are muscular; aorta is elastic.

The full note in the atlas also covers

Relations · Branches · Histology · Development

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Written from

• Snell’s Clinical Anatomy by Regions, 10th ed., ch. 12, PDF pp. 1638–1640
• Inderbir Singh’s Human Embryology, ch. 15, PDF pp. 249, 251
• BRS Cell Biology & Histology, 7th ed., ch. 11, PDF pp. 197–199

More from the head and neck

• External ear
• External jugular vein
• External nose
• Eyelids and conjunctiva
• Facial bones of the orbit and nasal cavity
• Facial nerve
• Frontal bone
• Frontal lobe
• Genioglossus
• Geniohyoid
• Glossopharyngeal nerve
• Hippocampus

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