What is an AVM?

Q:  I am a healthy 32 year old woman.  I take no medicines, but during a workup for a sinus infection my doctor told me I have what is called an AVM in the brain and that I may be at risk for bleeding.  He says there is treatment for it, but they have to go into an artery into the brain to fix it.  I am super nervous.  I feel fine.  What should I look for to watch for a problem with this?

 A:  AVM is short for an arteriovenous malformaton.  This basically means that there is a shortcut between the arteries and the veins.  Normally, blood travels from the heart through arteries to supply blood to the organs and your entire body.  Then the veins bring the blood back to the heart once the oxygen is used in the cells in your body.  With an AVM the blood goes directly from the artery to the vein, without supplying blood to anything in the body.  When these occur in the brain, they are at risk of bleeding.  Symptoms include severe, sudden onset headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures or a loss of consciousness.  If you have any worrisome symptoms at all, it is important that you go directly to the emergency room.  Treatment, as they told you, is frequently done through catheter based procedures that are place in arteries in the body and threaded up to the brain.  Then doctors can put a small coil in the AVM, which will block off the AVM and eliminate the risk of it bleeding.

To learn more about AVM watch this video on VideoMD.com.