Submental artery

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Artery: Submental artery
Dissection, showing salivary glands of right side. (Submental artery visible at bottom right.)
Latin arteria submentalis
Gray's subject #144 555
Source facial artery
Dorlands/Elsevier a_61/12156063

The submental artery is a branch of the facial artery that runs on the underside of the chin.

[edit] Structure

The submental artery is the largest of the cervical branches of the facial artery, given off just as that vessel leaves the submandibular gland: it runs forward upon the mylohyoid, just below the body of the mandible, and beneath the digastric muscle.

It supplies the surrounding muscles, and anastomoses with the sublingual artery and with the mylohyoid branch of the inferior alveolar artery; at the symphysis menti it turns upward over the border of the mandible and divides into a superficial and a deep branch.

[edit] Additional images

This article was originally based on an entry from a public domain edition of Gray's Anatomy. As such, some of the information contained herein may be outdated. Please edit the article if this is the case, and feel free to remove this notice when it is no longer relevant.