Endovascular treatment of cerebral arteriovenous malformations.

The authors report their experience with the endovascular approach of AVMs. Although the follow-up is short, the approach to the lesion and the morbidity related to the technique is low. 41 patients are reviewed. The most important feature of this series is that only 17 patients had previously bled. 27 had seizures and the remaining intractable headaches or progressive deficits. Only 4 patients were operated on following embolization. Clinical results are good, although few "anatomic" cures have been obtained by embolization alone (5 cases). However, the morbidity was moderately important (19%) per patient, 2/3 of which were totally regressive within a month. One death occurred during the procedure for a young male with a non-surgical posterior fossa brain AVM which had bled two times prior to the endovascular treatment. Topographic presentation of our results is the following: Pure cortical (13 cases), cortico-ventricular (17 cases), deep-seated (without vein of Galen) (2 patient), Posterior fossa (3 cases).