Deep palmar arch at a glance
- What it is
- The deep palmar arch is an arterial arch in the palm, mainly formed by the radial artery.
- Location
- It lies deep to the flexor tendons at the bases of the metacarpals, about 1 cm closer to the wrist than the superficial arch. It is formed by the radial artery joining the deep palmar branch of the ulnar artery and gives palmar metacarpal arteries.
- Function
- It supplies the deep structures of the palm, metacarpals and interosseous muscles. The thumb and index finger are supplied by the princeps pollicis and radialis indicis arteries, which arise from the radial artery just before it forms the arch.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA22840 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- It also gives perforating branches to the dorsal metacarpal arteries and recurrent branches to the carpus.
- The deep branch of the ulnar nerve runs within the concavity of the arch.
Structures next to the deep palmar arch
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Superficial palmar arterial arch · cardiovascular
- Capitate · skeletal
- Trapezoid · skeletal
- Dorsal carpal branch of radial artery · cardiovascular
- Hamate · skeletal
- Dorsal carpal branch of ulnar artery · cardiovascular
- Trapezium · skeletal
- Scaphoid · skeletal
- Extensor indicis · muscular
- Lunate · skeletal
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Deep palmar arch (FMA22840). 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.