Anatomy of the feeding blood vessels of the cremaster muscle in the rat

Since the early seventies over 300 studies have used the cremaster muscle as a flap model, yet little has been reported on the upstream feeding vessels of this muscle. The purpose of this study was to investigate the anatomy of the cranial feeding vessels of the left and right cremaster muscle in Sprague-Dawley rats. An additional aim was to compare these results with the anatomy of the feeding vessels of the cremaster muscle in another strain (Wistar). To permit identification of the cranial feeding vessels, the pedicle was dissected very carefully and thereafter perfused with green dye, which was administered through a cannula placed in the distal femoral artery. In Sprague-Dawley rats it was found that the cremaster muscle in only 30% of the animals received its total blood supply through the superior external pudendal artery. In Wistar rats the same was true in less than 45%. The cremaster muscle of the rest of the animals appeared to receive its blood either in part or in total from the hypogastric trunk. We suggest that the name pudic-epigastric trunk be abandoned.