Anatomy Guide › Upper limb
Radial Artery
Press two fingers gently on the thumb side of your wrist, just below the base of the palm, and you will feel the radial artery beating. This is the most famous pulse point on the human body — the one used in clinics, films, and first-aid classes alike — because here the artery runs shallow, directly over the flat lower end of the radius, with nothing but skin and a thin fascia above it. Pressing it against bone makes the heartbeat easy to count.
The radial artery begins just below the elbow, where the brachial artery splits into radial and ulnar branches. It travels down the forearm under the edge of the brachioradialis muscle, surfaces at the wrist, then takes a scenic route: it curls around the thumb side of the wrist through the anatomical snuffbox, dives between the first two hand bones, and sweeps across the palm as the deep palmar arch, linking up with the ulnar artery's territory. The two arteries form a loop, so the hand has a built-in backup supply — a redundancy clinicians verify before borrowing the vessel.
Borrow it they do: the radial artery is modern medicine's workhorse. Cardiologists thread catheters through it to reach the heart for angiograms and stent placements, anesthetists cannulate it to measure blood pressure beat-by-beat, and cardiac surgeons harvest it as a bypass graft. Few vessels of its size are asked to do so much.
In Anamo, the radial artery traces the thumb-side lane from elbow to palm. It pairs with the radius, scaphoid, and the extensor muscles of the thumb — learn the lane and every warm guess along it points toward the wrist.
- The classic pulse-taking site at the thumb side of the wrist
- One of two terminal branches of the brachial artery
- Routinely used for cardiac catheterization and as a bypass graft
- Joins the ulnar artery in the palm, giving the hand a double supply
Think you could find the radial artery on a 3D model? Play Anamo and test yourself — every guess is color-coded by how close it lands to the mystery structure.