coronary artery
Sign in to saveAlso known as Conus artery
artery of the coronary circulation which transports blood into and out of the cardiac muscle
Wikidata facts
- Part of
- coronary circulation
- Image
- Gray492.png
Show 4 more facts
- Commons category
- Coronary arteries
- anatomical location
- heart
- NCI Thesaurus ID
- C12843
- anatomical branch of
- ascending aorta
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The coronary arteries are the arterial blood vessels of coronary circulation, which transport oxygenated blood to the heart muscle. The heart requires a continuous supply of oxygen to function and survive, much like any other tissue or organ of the body.
The coronary arteries wrap around the entire heart. The two main branches are the left coronary artery and right coronary artery. The arteries can additionally be categorized based on the area of the heart for which they provide circulation. These categories are called epicardial (above the epicardium, or the outermost tissue of the heart) and microvascular (close to the endocardium, or the innermost tissue of the heart).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “coronary artery” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.