Right Coronary Artery

The right coronary artery is an artery arising from the ascending aorta and giving rise t the right or dorsal interventricular artery and a marginal branch. The artery’s origin is from the right coronary sinus and branches into  the  into the coronary sulcus, which it follows around the heart’s right margin and then left at the heart’s diaphragmatic surface, where it branches into the right or dorsal interventricular artery and the marginal branch. The right or dorsal interventricular artery (aka: posterior interventricular artery, ramus interventricularis posterior, ramus interventricularis posterior arteriae coronariae dextrae, posterior descending artery) follows the dorsal sulcus downward two thirds of the distance to the apex, and provides branches to the right and left ventricles. The marginal branch’s origin s at the right margin, and follows the acute margin untl it ends at the apex on the back surface of the right ventricule. It feeds the forward and back surfaces of the right ventricule, as well as providing branches to the right atrium, one of which runs between the right atrium and the superior vena cava to feed the sinoatrial node. In some patients the left coronary is a branch of the right coronary artery, and in others there is only one coronary artery or three, the extra one feeding the others’ branches. In half of patients the right coronary artery predominates, in one-third the right and left are equal, and in one-sixth the left one predominates. In seventy percent of patients the right coronary artery feeds the sinoatrial node, but in twenty-five percent it is fed by the left and in seven percent by both. The atrioventricular node is fed by the right coronary artery in ninety-two percent of cases.

CTA of the Coronary Arteries

RCA 

51 year old male with apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and normal coronary arteries Ashley Davidoff MD TheCommonVein.net apical-hypertrophic-cardiomyopathy

RCA 

51 year old male with apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and normal coronary arteries Ashley Davidoff MD TheCommonVein.net apical-hypertrophic-cardiomyopathy
Congenital Abnormalities

Origin of the RCA

Separate origins of the right coronary artery (RCA) and its conal branch occur in 50 percent of the population and