Femoral vein at a glance
- What it is
- The femoral vein is the main deep vein of the thigh and continues the popliteal vein.
- Location
- It begins at the adductor hiatus, ascends behind the femoral artery in the adductor canal and medial to it in the femoral triangle, and becomes the external iliac vein at the inguinal ligament. It receives the deep femoral vein and the great saphenous vein at the saphenofemoral junction.
- Function
- It drains the lower limb.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA21189 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- In the femoral triangle it lies medial to the femoral artery, and the femoral canal with lymph nodes lies medial to it.
Clinical relevance
Deep vein thrombosis commonly involves it.
Structures next to the femoral vein
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Femoral artery · cardiovascular
- Adductor longus · muscular
- Deep femoral vein · cardiovascular
- Adductor brevis · muscular
- Sartorius · muscular
- Femur · skeletal
- Descending branch of lateral circumflex femoral artery · cardiovascular
- Adductor magnus · muscular
- Testis · reproductive
- Rectus femoris · muscular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Femoral vein (FMA21189). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §20.1 Structure and Function of Blood Vessels. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.