cavernous sinus
The cavernous sinus (or lateral sellar compartment), within the human head, is a large collection of thin-walled veins creating a cavity bordered by the temporal bone of the skull and the sphenoid bone, lateral to the sella turcica. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.
What the cavernous sinus is
The cavernous sinus (or lateral sellar compartment), within the human head, is a large collection of thin-walled veins creating a cavity bordered by the temporal bone of the skull and the sphenoid bone, lateral to the sella turcica. The atlas records it as a organ at the organ scale in the human body.
Where the cavernous sinus is
It sits within the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Not positioned individually, and containment is not asserted either. Drawn near structures of the same kind, which is a weak claim about location.
What the cavernous sinus connects to
The atlas records 9 typed relationships for it, across 3 kinds of connection. a kind of venous dural sinus.
Supply and innervation
Venous drainage: canal of Schlemm, central retinal vein, hypophyseal vein, naso-frontal vein and superficial middle cerebral vein.
Also called
Also recorded as cavernous, cavernous sinus syndrome, cavernous sinuses, cavernus sinus vein, parasellar syndrome and sinus cavernosus. Searching any of those names reaches this page.
Source
Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0003712, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.
- A kind of: venous dural sinus.
- Connected to: inferior petrosal sinus, inferior ophthalmic vein and superior ophthalmic vein.
- drains to: canal of Schlemm, central retinal vein, hypophyseal vein, naso-frontal vein and superficial middle cerebral vein.
Questions
Where is the cavernous sinus?
It sits within the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Not positioned individually, and containment is not asserted either. Drawn near structures of the same kind, which is a weak claim about location.
What does the cavernous sinus connect to?
A kind of: venous dural sinus.
Is the cavernous sinus the same in other species?
Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.