Nerve · Head

Infraorbital nerve

Nervus infraorbitalis

The direct continuation of the maxillary nerve onto the face, and the sensory nerve of the cheek. After crossing the pterygopalatine fossa the maxillary nerve turns into the eye socket, runs forward in a groove and then a roofed canal in the thin floor of the orbit, and emerges onto the face through the infraorbital foramen, a finger's breadth below the lower eyelid. There it fans into branches for the lower lid, the side of the nose and the upper lip. Inside that canal it also gives off the middle and anterior superior alveolar nerves to the upper teeth — so one short tunnel in the orbital floor carries the supply of the cheek skin, the upper lip and the upper front teeth together.