Arrangement and prevalence of branches in the external carotid artery in humans

The external carotid artery originates branches to face structures. The superior thyroid, lingual and facial arteries are originated from this vessel as artery trunks or separately. The aim of this study was to determinate the arrangement frequency of these artery branches. For this, thirty six (36) hemi-heads of adult cadavers from both genders were studied. The anatomic parts were fixed in 10% of formalin and dissected. The superior thyroid, lingual and facial arteries were analyzed in terms of their origins. The superior thyroid, lingual and facial arteries originated separately from the external or common carotid artery in 77.8% of the cases. A linguofacial trunk was observed in 19.9% of the cases and a thyrolingual trunk in 2.8%. A thyrolinguofacial trunk was not observed. In 51.2% cases the superior thyroid artery originated directly from the external carotid artery, in 45.3% from the bifurcation of the common carotid artery, and in 3.5% from the common carotid artery. Thus, the superior thyroid, lingual and facial arteries more frequently showed a separate origin from the external or common carotid artery. Among the combined artery trunks, the linguofacial trunk was most frequently observed, followed by the thyrolingual trunk. The superior thyroid artery originated more frequently from the external or common carotid artery; however, it also could emerge from the bifurcation of the common carotid artery.