The thigh
At the fourth lumbar vertebra the aorta ends in the two common iliac arteries. Each divides in front of the joint between the sacrum and the hip bone. The internal iliac feeds the pelvis and the buttock, and the external iliac runs on towards the leg.
Under the inguinal ligament the external iliac becomes the femoral artery. Its pulse can be felt in the groin, halfway between the front point of the hip bone and the pubic symphysis. A few centimetres lower it gives off the deep femoral artery, which feeds most of the thigh muscles.
The groin opened below the inguinal ligament: the femoral nerve, artery and vein side by side, with the great saphenous vein joining the femoral vein, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 545Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray545.png)
The femoral artery runs down the front and inner side of the thigh. Above the knee it passes through a gap in the adductor muscles to the back of the knee, where it becomes the popliteal artery.
The femoral artery down the front of the thigh, with the deep femoral (profunda) branch and its perforating arteries, Gray's Anatomy, 1918, figure 548Wikimedia Commons, Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain (Gray548.png)
Sources
- Susan Standring (ed.), Gray's Anatomy, 42nd ed. (2020), chapters on the true pelvis and on the pelvic girdle, gluteal region and thigh.
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