Brain Arteriovenous Malformation

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Brain arteriovenous malformations (bAVMs) refer to the congenital malformation with direct arteriovenous communications characterized by an abnormal connection between feeding arteries and draining veins lack of the brain capillary network. However, the accurate etiology and pathogenesis of bAVMs remain inconsistent. The potential mechanism may be attributed to congenital aberrancies of vascular development in the embryo. bAVMs usually occur in young adults between the age of 20 and 40 years old, with an average age of 34 years . The most commonly observed neurological presentation is intracranial hemorrhage (3%), followed by focal or generalized seizure (1%), chronic headache, progressive neurological deficit, or no symptoms . To achieve the goal of preventing cerebral hemorrhage and decreasing the frequency of seizures, various treatments have emerged in an endless stream in recent years. The major treatment modalities for bAVMs including endovascular embolization, microsurgical resection, stereotactic radiosurgery, either alone or in combination to improve the rate of complete nidal obliteration. Generally, microsurgical resection is recommended as a treatment modality for patients with low-grade bAVMs (grade I-II). Moreover, endovascular embolization is now recognized as an effective treatment performed alone or combined with microsurgical resection. However, three traditional treatments for bAVMs have the limitations that approximately 30% of patients remain untreatable despite successfully eliminating the lesion. In the past ten years, further studies on the treatment of bAVMs tend to be multimodality treatment. A recent expert consensus on the treatment of bAVMs suggested that hybrid intervention of microsurgery, intraoperative angiography, and endovascular embolization in a hybrid operating room may be an advanced and effective approach for the management of bAVMs. Although a few studies have confirmed its effectiveness and benefits such as a high rate of immediate, complete, and permanent AVM obliteration, its exact efficacy has yet to be completely revealed. Here, we report a series of bAVMs treated with a hybrid intervention or endovascular treatment alone. Furthermore, we compared the clinical outcome and prognosis between hybrid operation and nonhybrid operation (i.e. endovascular embolization).