The Role of Embolisation in the Management of Arteriovenous Malformations
Abstract
Arteriovenous malformations in the brain are congenital lesions that present with haemorrhages, seizures, headaches and neurological deficits.
The clinical presentation of AVM are haemorrhages, seizures, headaches sometimes in the form of migraines and neurological deficit5 as a result of injury to the surrounding eloquent brain regions.8 In some instances AVMs are asymptomatic. AVMs usually only present themselves in the second or third decade of life and occurs with equal frequency in both men and women.5
The natural history of AVMs are haemorrhages, seizures, neurological deficits, headaches and death.
Endovascular embolisation is often used to treat small AVMs and is minimally invasive. It can be used prior to both surgery and radio-surgery. Embolisation alone cannot obliterate many morphologically different groups of AVMs. It is normally only used to obliterate smaller AVMs with limited number of feeders.
Nevertheless, embolisation has emerged as a part of multi-modality treatment in the overall management in certain parts of the world. The success of any particular approach depends on a multi-disciplinary team comprising of surgeons and interventional specialists.
When publishing with Kerala Medicial Journal (KMJ), authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Work includes the material submitted for publication and any other related material submitted to KMJ. In the event that KMJ does not publish said work, the author(s) will be so notified and all rights assigned hereunder will revert to the author(s).
The assignment of rights to KMJ includes but is not expressly limited to rights to edit, publish, reproduce, distribute copies, include in indexes or search databases in print, electronic, or other media, whether or not in use at the time of execution of this agreement.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
The author(s) hereby represents and warrants that they are sole author(s) of the work, that all authors have participated in and agree with the content and conclusions of the work, that the work is original, and does not infringe upon any copyright, propriety, or personal right of any third party, and that no part of it nor any work based on substantially similar data has been submitted to another publication.
