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(Stroke. 2005;36:2060.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

Brain Arteriovenous Malformations

Children and Adults

J.P. Mohr, MS, MD

From the Doris & Stanley Tananbaum Stroke Center, Neurological Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY

Correspondence to J.P. Mohr, MS, MD, Doris & Stanley Tananbaum Stroke Center, Neurological Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, 710 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032. E-mail jpm10@columbia.edu

Key Words: cerebral arteriovenous malformations • child • cerebral hemorrhage

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Although intracranial hemorrhages,¹ interest in brain arteriovenous malformations (BAVMs) is expanding from its origins as a neuropathologic curiosity to the treatment-oriented specialties of neurological surgery, interventional neuroradiology, radiosurgery/therapy, and clinical neurology, and is even emerging as a subject in neuroepidemiology.

Recent insights from uncontrolled series: argue for some genetic derangements in the origin of some of the lesions^2,3; have revised some issues of pathophysiology^4–7; track the risk of hemorrhage over time⁸; suggest the risk for hemorrhage can be predicted by vascular factors discoverable by noninvasive or minimally invasive imaging^9,10; indicate many initial hemorrhage syndromes are mild,¹¹ more so than that caused by non-BAVM parenchymal or aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhages¹²; have reassessed the outcomes from intervention in a variety of forms after initial hemorrhage^13–15; raise questions concerning the safety and value of intervention before hemorrhage^16,17; and support a proposal for randomized trials for BAVMs discovered before rupture,^18,19 to name but a few of the directions in which work is proceeding in this field.

The prevalence of BAVMs is difficult to estimate, given the lack of a population subject to uniform brain imaging.²⁰ Some insights are provided from rare studies from the likes of uniform magnetic resonance screening of clinically normal recruitees for the German Air Force,²¹ showing a relative frequency of <0.7% of asymptomatic brain lesions, including among them BAVMs. However, most information comes from nonuniform imaging done in recently reported large prospective population settings, in which 0.5 of 100 000 cases of BAVM discovered . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Article:

Long-Term Hemorrhage Risk in Children Versus Adults With Brain Arteriovenous Malformations

Heather J. Fullerton, Achal S. Achrol, S. Claiborne Johnston, Charles E. McCulloch, Randall T. Higashida, Michael T. Lawton, Stephen Sidney, William L. Young For the UCSF BAVM Study Project
Stroke 2005 36: 2099-2104. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]