Suprascapular artery at a glance
- What it is
- A branch of the thyrocervical trunk to the scapular region.
- Location
- It arises from the thyrocervical trunk, runs across the neck, passes over the superior transverse scapular ligament and supplies the supraspinous and infraspinous fossae.
- Function
- It supplies supraspinatus and infraspinatus.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA10681 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- The suprascapular nerve passes under the ligament while the artery passes above it.
- It forms part of the scapular anastomosis with the circumflex scapular and dorsal scapular arteries.
Structures next to the suprascapular artery
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Trunk of thoraco-acromial artery · cardiovascular
- Clavicle · skeletal
- Subclavius · muscular
- Supraspinatus · muscular
- Acromial branch of thoraco-acromial artery · cardiovascular
- Axillary artery · cardiovascular
- Transverse part of trapezius · muscular
- Subclavian artery · cardiovascular
- Serratus posterior superior · muscular
- Iliocostalis cervicis · muscular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Suprascapular artery (FMA10681). 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.