IJ Radiology
Spinal arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) are a rare and enigmatic disease entity. These lesions can be a significant cause of myelopathy and their initial symptoms mainly include sensory loss and motor weakness. The treatment of spinal AVMs has improved tremendously. However, the choice between surgical treatment and embolization remains a matter of debate.
The aim of this study is to investigate the outcome of the endovascular management of these lesions.
We report on 18 patients with spinal-AVM in whom the diagnosis was confirmed by using spinal-MRI/angiography. Patient age ranged from 19 to 73 years. All patients underwent embolization with glue/onyx. Before and after the operation, patients were followed using Aminoff Logue scale to measure clinical outcome and spinal-MRI to evaluate the feature of the lesion.
There was significant difference between the clinical scores (based on AminoffLogue scale) of before and after operations (P < 0.01). This significant change is seen in both short and long-term follow-up. Temporary clinical deterioration was found in one patient. Our data showed that the efficacy of this method in long-term follow-up is about 90%.
Endovascular embolization is an effective therapeutic procedure in the treatment of spinal AVMs.
© 2014, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
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