Dural venous sinuses

 The dural venous sinuses (also called dural sinuses, cerebral sinuses, or cranial sinuses) are venous channels found between the endosteal and meningeal layers of dura mater in the brain.^[1][2] They receive blood from the cerebral veins, receive cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the subarachnoid space via arachnoid granulations, and mainly empty into the internal jugular vein.^[2]

Dural venous sinuses
Illustration of the dural venous sinuses
Dural venous sinuses
Details
Identifiers
Latin	Sinus durae matris
MeSH	D003392
TA98	A12.3.05.101
TA2	4846
FMA	76590
Anatomical terminology [edit on Wikidata]

Venous sinusesEdit

Name	Drains to
Anterior
Sphenoparietal sinuses	Cavernous sinuses
Cavernous sinuses	Superior and inferior petrosal sinuses
Midline
Superior sagittal sinus	Typically becomes right transverse sinus or confluence of sinuses
Inferior sagittal sinus	Straight sinus
Straight sinus	Typically becomes left transverse sinus or confluence of sinuses
Posterior
Occipital sinus	Confluence of Sinus
Confluence of sinuses	Right and Left transverse sinuses
Lateral
Superior petrosal sinus	Transverse sinuses
Transverse sinuses	Sigmoid sinus
Inferior petrosal sinus	Internal jugular vein
Sigmoid sinuses	Internal jugular vein

StructureEdit

The walls of the dural venous sinuses are composed of dura mater lined with endothelium, a specialized layer of flattened cells found in blood vessels. They differ from other blood vessels in that they lack a full set of vessel layers (e.g. tunica media) characteristic of arteries and veins. It also lacks valves (in veins; with exception of materno-fetal blood circulation i.e. placental artery and pulmonary arteries both of which carry deoxygenated blood).

Clinical relevanceEdit

The sinuses can be injured by trauma in which damage to the dura mater, may result in blood clot formation (thrombosis) within the dural sinuses. Other common causes of dural sinus thrombosis include tracking of infection through the ophthalmic vein in orbital cellulitis. While rare, dural sinus thrombosis may lead to hemorrhagic infarction or cerebral oedema with serious consequences including epilepsy, neurological deficits, or death.^[3]

Additional imagesEdit

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.