Video: Inferior sagittal sinus

Hello everyone! This is Matt from Kenhub, and in this tutorial, we are going to be looking at the inferior sagittal sinus. The inferior sagittal sinus is one of the dural venous sinuses which receive venous blood from the brain and the meninges.

The human brain has the highest demand for oxygen of all the tissues in the human body and it receives oxygenated blood from two main systems – the internal carotid system anteriorly and the vertebrobasilar system posteriorly. Now, the venous drainage of the brain does not necessarily follow the arteries of the brain. Instead, the deoxygenated blood from the brain is drained into the dural venous sinuses which subsequently drain into the internal jugular vein.

There are six paired dural venous sinuses and four unpaired dural venous sinuses and, in this tutorial, we will be looking at one of these dural venous sinuses which is the unpaired inferior sagittal sinus.

There are two sagittal sinuses that occupy the longitudinal cerebral fissure in the midline between the cerebral hemispheres. The superficial most of the two is the superior sagittal sinus and the other one is the inferior sagittal sinus – seen here highlighted in green. It lies deep to the superior sagittal sinus in the inferior free border of the falx cerebri and just dorsal to the corpus callosum. This sinus is concave in shape and is much smaller than its counterpart – the superior sagittal sinus.

The inferior sagittal sinus extends from the region just above the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone increasing in size as it passes backwards and continues to the anterior midline of the tentorium cerebelli terminating in the straight sinus. Along its course, the inferior sagittal sinus receives several tributary veins that drain from the medial part of the cerebral hemispheres. It also receives several veins from the falx cerebri itself.

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