thoracic duct

A major lymphatic vessel that drains lymph from the lower body, left appendage, and left thorax into the junction of the left jugular and subclavian veins. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the thoracic duct is

A major lymphatic vessel that drains lymph from the lower body, left appendage, and left thorax into the junction of the left jugular and subclavian veins. The atlas records it as a lymphatic at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the thoracic duct is

It sits within the cardiovascular and lymphatic & immune systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the thoracic duct connects to

The atlas records 3 typed relationships for it, across 3 kinds of connection. a kind of lymphatic vessel.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the thoracic duct. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as trunk of thoracic duct tree and ductus thoracicus. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001631, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• A kind of: lymphatic vessel.
• Develops from: posterior cardinal vein.
• contains: upper part of cisterna chyli.

Questions

Where is the thoracic duct?

It sits within the cardiovascular and lymphatic & immune systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the thoracic duct connect to?

A kind of: lymphatic vessel.

Is the thoracic duct 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.