Spinal arteriovenous malformations: surgical outcome

Spinal arteriovenous malformations are relatively rare, being one tenth as common as cerebral AVMs and one tenth as common as primary spinal neoplasms. The aim of this retrospective study was to see distribution of this disease in spinal cord and analyse outcome of surgical treatment in our set-up. 5 patients with neurologic deficit due to spinal AVMs were operated upon from March 2000 to Feb 2005. Age ranged from 25-45 years with mean of 35 years. There were 2 females and 3 males with sex ratio of 1:1.5 respectively. Spinal AVMs were categorized as one of 4 types based on pattern of arterial and venous supply. We found that 60% (3 cases) in our series were intradural AVMs while 40% (2 cases) were dural type. We conclude that glomus variety of intradural AVMs was the commonest. The commonest presentation was acute spinal dysfunction and paraparesis. Selective spinal angiography can be negative in spinal AVMs, (20%) in our series, in which CT angiography provided clue to the feeding vessels.