Blood vessel
tubular structure which carries blood
Blood vessels are the tubular structures of a circulatory system transporting blood in animal bodies. Blood vessels transport blood cells, nutrients, and oxygen to most of the tissues of a body, and also transport waste products and carbon dioxide away from the tissues. Some tissues – such as cartilage, epithelium, and the lens and cornea of the eye – are not supplied with blood vessels, so are termed avascular.
There are five types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the arterioles; the capillaries, where the exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and tissues occurs; the venules; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back towards the heart.
The word, vascular, is derived from the Latin vas, meaning vessel, and is used in reference to blood vessels.
Etymology
artery – late Middle English; from Latin arteria, from Greek artēria, probably derived from airein ("raise").
vein – Middle English; from Old French veine, from Latin vena.
capillary – mid-17th century; from Latin capillaris, from capillus ("hair"), influenced by Old French capillaire.
Structure
The arteries and veins have three layers. The middle layer (tunica media) is thicker in the arteries than it is in the veins:
The inner layer, tunica intima, is the thinnest layer.
The public source identifies “Blood vessel” as tubular structure which carries blood. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Blood, vessel and tubular.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q988343. The Library of Congress control number is sh85015021. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blood vessel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.