External iliac artery at a glance
- What it is
- The external iliac artery is the main artery of the lower limb in the pelvis and becomes the femoral artery.
- Location
- It arises from the common iliac artery at the pelvic brim, runs along the medial border of psoas major and passes beneath the inguinal ligament at the midpoint between the anterior superior iliac spine and the pubic symphysis, where it becomes the femoral artery. Its branches are the inferior epigastric and deep circumflex iliac arteries.
- Function
- It supplies the lower limb and the lower anterior abdominal wall.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA18807 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- It has no branches in the pelvis apart from the two near the inguinal ligament, so it is a straight conduit to the lower limb.
Structures next to the external iliac artery
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Testicular vein · cardiovascular
- Testicular artery · cardiovascular
- External iliac vein · cardiovascular
- Appendix · digestive
- Mesoappendix · digestive
- Ileocecal junction · digestive
- Appendicular artery · cardiovascular
- Obturator vein · cardiovascular
- Hip bone · skeletal
- Superficial epigastric vein · cardiovascular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: External iliac artery (FMA18807). 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.