Ascending cervical artery

The ascending cervical artery is a small branch which arises from the inferior thyroid as that vessel is passing behind the carotid sheath; it runs up on the anterior tubercles of the transverse processes of the cervical vertebræ in the interval between the Scalenus anterior and Longus capitis.

To the muscles of the neck it gives twigs which anastomose with branches of the vertebral, and it sends one or two spinal branches into the vertebral canal through the intervertebral foramina to be distributed to the medulla spinalis and its membranes, and to the bodies of the vertebræ, in the same manner as the spinal branches from the vertebral.

It anastomoses with the ascending pharyngeal and occipital arteries.