A pathologic correlate of the 'steal' phenomenon in a patient with cerebral arteriovenous malformation.

A patient died after therapeutic bucrylate embolization and resection of a right occipital arteriovenous malformation, which received significant blood supply from the right posterior cerebral artery. At autopsy, there was marked diffuse neuron loss and gliosis in all cell layers of the right hippocampus--pathology which we hypothesize was secondary to a 'steal' of blood from this structure into the malformation. This report represents pathologic evidence for a phenomenon believed to be of major clinical importance in the symptomatology of many AVMs.