Urethral artery

{{Short description|Artery}}

{{More footnotes|article|date=June 2015}}

{{Infobox artery

| Name = Urethral artery

| Latin = arteria urethralis

| Image = Gray1158.png

| Caption = Diagram of the arteries of the penis.

| Image2 =

| Caption2 =

| BranchFrom = Internal pudendal artery{{cite book |author=Kyung Won, PhD. Chung |title=Gross Anatomy (Board Review) |publisher=Lippincott Williams & Wilkins |location=Hagerstown, MD |year=2005 |isbn=0-7817-5309-0 |page=269}} or perineal artery{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

| BranchTo =

| Vein =

| Supplies = Membranous urethra, glans penis

}}

The urethral artery arises from the internal pudendal artery a branch of the internal iliac artery. The internal pudendal artery has numerous branches including the artery of the bulb of the penis immediately before the urethral and the dorsal artery of the penis more distally.Netter, F. H. (2006). Atlas of human anatomy. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders/Elsevier.

In the male, it penetrates the perineal membrane and provides blood to the urethra and nearby erectile tissue to the glans.Drake, R. L., Vogl, W., Mitchell, A. W. M., & Gray, H. (2015). Gray's anatomy for students. In the female, the urethral artery serves the analogous structures. Because the female urethra is so much shorter than the male, this structure is often impossible to find on a female cadaver.