Treatment
Treatment for brain AVMs can be symptomatic, and patients should be followed by a neurologist for any seizures, headaches or focal deficits. AVM-specific treatment may also involve endovascular embolization, neurosurgery or radiation therapy. Embolization, that is, cutting off the blood supply to the AVM with coils or particles or glue introduced by a radiographically guided catheter, can be used in addition to either, but is rarely successful in isolation except for in smaller AVMs. The neurological risk of any such intervention is roughly 10%. For unruptured brain AVMs, the benefit for endovascular, neurosurgical or radiation therapy is as yet unknown. Therefore, the best way to follow an unruptured brain AVM is to join the NIH/NINDS funded international study designed for patients with an unruptured brain AVM.
Read more about this topic: Arteriovenous Malformation
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