Patterns of Blood Supply to Teeth and Adjacent Tissues

¹ West Virginia University Medical Center, Morgantown, West Virginia

The basic vascular pattern of the teeth of the rat, rabbit, opossum, and hamster shows a very striking similarity, if minor differences in the shape of the teeth, mandible, and maxilla are disregarded.

Essentially, the blood supply of the teeth may be considered as coming from the following sources: (1) the periosteal vessels, (2) the vessels emanating from the medullary portion of adjacent surrounding bone, (3) those vessels which supply adjacent or closely related musculature, and (4) the intrinsic named arteries, such as the superior alveolar or the inferior alveolar.

Every tooth, regardless of type or location, has as its principal ultimate source of vascularity one or more of the preceding. This applies even to the periodontal plexus of the incisor tooth, which frequently contributes to the vascularity of the molar teeth.

More specifically, every tooth is surrounded by a periodontal plexus which displays a constant anatomical relationship, i.e., it lies between the external surface of the tooth and the compact bone of the alveolus. Furthermore, every tooth has an intrinsic supply which comprises the pulp vessels. These may be derived directly from named arteries or from arteries of the medullary bone.

It is quite evident that most oral tissues are liberally vascularized. If the vascular pathways as we have found them in laboratory animals approximate in profuseness, if not in physical anatomical resemblance, those found in the human, it is easy to realize why a traumatic lesion of the gingiva is frequently accompanied by profuse bleeding, why prolonged and unnatural pressure on the hard palate or alveolar ridges may cause resorption of bone and/or necrosis of soft tissues, or why the extraction of a tooth may be accompanied by copious bleeding of long duration.