Below the knee
Behind the knee the popliteal artery lies deep in a hollow filled with fat, so its pulse is hard to feel. Just below the knee it divides into the anterior and posterior tibial arteries.
The back of the knee and leg: the popliteal artery and the posterior tibial artery running down the calf to behind the inner ankle, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 551Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray551.png)
The anterior tibial passes forward between the two leg bones and runs down the front of the leg to become the dorsalis pedis on the top of the foot. The posterior tibial runs down the calf, passes behind the inner ankle bone and divides under the foot into the plantar arteries of the sole.
The front of the leg and foot: the anterior tibial artery running down to become the dorsalis pedis on the top of the foot, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 553Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray553.png)
Doctors feel for a pulse on the top of the foot and behind the inner ankle to judge the blood supply of the foot. Standing adds the weight of the blood column: in a standing adult the arterial pressure in the feet is about 90 millimetres of mercury higher than at the heart.
Sources
- Susan Standring (ed.), Gray's Anatomy, 42nd ed. (2020), chapters on the knee, the leg, and the ankle and foot.
- Arthur Guyton and John Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology, 13th ed. (2016), ch. 15.
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