Spinal Arteriovenous Malformations - Two Case Reports

Spinal arteriovenous malformations are a group of rare diseases with highly diverse clinical manifestations. The optimal therapeutic practice should always be selected individually and patients should be sent to specialized centres. The objective of this paper is to provide a structured classification of spinal AVMs, their differential diagnosis and therapy, and to present two case reports. The first report is concerned with a case of a 27-year-old man who developed severe pain in the lumbar spine with predominantly meningeal symptomatology. An AVM fed by a hypertrophic radiculopial artery was found on the thoracic spine (Th11/12) MR. A specialized centre performed successful embolization of an arteriovenous shunt. The second report presents a case of a 41-year-old woman, who felt sudden sharp pain in the neck while skiing. Neurologically, she developed an incomplete spinal cord lesion with quadriparesis with left-sided accentuation of severe intensity and sensation threshold at C1. The MR and MRAG of the cervical spinal cord and the following DSA of vertebral artery detected AVM fed by the left posterior spinal artery. Elective endovascular embolization was indicated and the patient was treated at a specialized institute in France.