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So the blood supply to the kidneys is by the renal arteries and veins. It's supplied by
the renal artery and drained by the renal vein.
So what we're looking at here is the abdominal aorta and we've got the inferior vena cava.
You can see the renal arteries coming off the abdominal aorta just below the level of
the superior mesenteric artery. So this trunk here coming off the abdominal aorta is the
superior mesentery artery and just above that, we have the coeliac axis (which for some reason
has a little bit of blue in it, but it is an artery).
So the renal arteries come off just below the level of the superior mesenteric artery
laterally off the aorta. It's important to note that the right renal artery is actually
longer than the left. So if I rotate the model around, you can see that the right renal artery
has to pass behind the inferior vena cava, so it's a little bit longer than the left
one, which doesn't have to travel this distance.
So just as the arteries are approaching the hilum of the kidney, they actually split into
two branches. So you've got an anterior and a posterior branch. This is just a little
diagram to show the anterior and posterior branches. You can see this split here of the
renal arteries as it approaches the hilum. It's important to note that.
So the renal veins sit in front of the renal arteries. It's opposite to the arteries. So
the left renal vein is longer because it obviously has to pass in front of the aorta. So the
left renal vein passes in front of the abdominal aorta and underneath the superior mesenteric
artery. And the right renal vein is a little bit shorter because it doesn't have to travel
across the aorta.
So the order of the structures passing into the hilum from anterior to posterior is vein,
artery and ureter.