Costocervical trunk at a glance
- What it is
- The costocervical trunk is a branch of the subclavian artery that supplies the neck and upper intercostal spaces.
- Location
- On the right it arises from the second part of the subclavian artery, behind scalenus anterior. On the left it usually arises from the first part, medial to that muscle. It arches back over the cervical pleura and divides into the deep cervical and supreme intercostal arteries.
- Function
- It supplies the deep neck muscles and the first two intercostal spaces.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA4086 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Its supreme intercostal branch descends in front of the neck of the first rib, beside the sympathetic trunk.
Structures next to the costocervical trunk
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Superior intercostal artery · cardiovascular
- Transverse cervical artery · cardiovascular
- Thyrocervical trunk · cardiovascular
- First rib · skeletal
- Subclavian artery · cardiovascular
- Subclavian vein · cardiovascular
- Inferior thyroid artery · cardiovascular
- Scalenus anterior · muscular
- Omohyoid · muscular
- Internal jugular vein · cardiovascular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Costocervical trunk (FMA4086). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §20.1 Structure and Function of Blood Vessels. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.