Description
The diploic veins are a valveless intraosseous network of veins draining the skull itself. These are situated in the diploe or the spongy layer of bone in the cranial vault and run inside the diploic channels, between the inner and the outer layers of the cortical bone of the skull.
The diploic veins communicate with the dural venous sinuses and meningeal veins along the compact inner table of the skull and with the pericranial veins on the outer table via emissary veins (Jivraj et al., 2009; Garcia-Gonzalez et al., 2009).
The diploic veins can be categorized into four categories based on their location in the human skull:
- frontal diploic veins;
- anterior temporal diploic veins;
- posterior temporal diploic veins;
- occipital diploic veins.
References
Garcia-Gonzalez, U., Cavalcanti, D. D., Agrawal, A., Gonzalez, L. F., Wallace, R. C., Spetzler, R. F. and Preul, M. C. (2009) 'The diploic venous system: surgical anatomy and neurosurgical implications', Neurosurg Focus, 27(5), pp. E2.
Jivraj, K., Bhargava, R., Aronyk, K., Quateen, A. and Walji, A. (2009) 'Diploic venous anatomy studied in-vivo by MRI', Clin Anat, 22(3), pp. 296-301.
