Video: Straight sinus

Hello everyone! This is Matt from Kenhub, and in this tutorial, we are going to look at one of the dural venous sinuses – the straight sinus.

The dural venous sinuses are intracranial venous channels that drain venous blood from the brain to the internal jugular vein. These venous channels are located between the layers of the cranial dura mater and their walls are lined by endothelium. There are six paired and four unpaired dural venous sinuses. The straight sinus is an unpaired dural venous sinus.

The straight sinus or sinus rectus in Latin is also known as the tentorial sinus. It lies within the dura mater along the superior surface of the tentorium cerebelli where the perpendicular falx cerebri forms a junction with the midline of the tentorium cerebelli.

When seen from its cross section, the straight sinus has a triangular shape. The straight sinus – shown in green – receives venous blood mainly from the great cerebral vein also known as the vein of Galen highlighted in green here as well as the inferior sagittal sinus highlighted in green here.

The superior cerebellar veins and veins from the occipital lobes also contribute. The straight sinus drains into the confluence of sinuses. The confluence of sinuses shown in green is formed by the confluence or joining of the straight sinus, the superior sagittal sinus and the occipital sinus.

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