BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:DAVFs with cortical venous reflux carry a high risk of morbidity and mortality. Endovascular treatment options include transarterial embolization with a liquid embolic agent or transvenous access with occlusion of the involved venous segment, which may prove difficult if the venous access route is thrombosed. The aim of this article is to describe the technique and results of the transvenous approach via thrombosed venous segments for occlusion of DAVFs.

We describe 19 (16.0%) multiple vascular malformations (AVMs) in 119 spinal cord arteriovenous malformations (SCAVMs). The associated lesions were eight vertebral vascular malformations, two cutaneous, four limbs, four radicular AVMs, three bifocal SCAVMs; one patient had a bifocal cord lesion associated with vertebral and limb localisations. Various syndromic associations were seen: nine Cobb, two Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber, one Parkes Weber. An additional subgroup of unclassified associations is constituted by seven cases with bifocal intradural uni or multimetamerk lesions. In our SCAVMs series, the incidence of multiple vascular lesions is high, in particular multifocal intradural malformations. Metameric distribution is the most frequent type of multiplicity. Identification of the myelomeric level involved in SCAVM allows segmental link between various lesions of mesodermal or neural crest origin to be discussed.

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A patient presented with vertebrobasilar insufficiency during exertion. Vertebral duplex and transcranial Doppler ultrasonography showed reversal of flow in both intracranial and extracranial vertebral and basilar arteries, suggesting bilateral subclavian and vertebrobasilar steal. Electron beam computed tomography angiography (CTA) showed no evidence of subclavian artery stenosis including normal vertebral artery origin on both sides. However, digital subtraction angiography revealed complete occlusion of both subclavian arteries with retrograde flow from both vertebral and basilar arteries to reconstitute both subclavian arteries. This false-negative finding on CTA in detection of subclavian steal syndrome (SSS) is due to inappropriate contrast administration technique and postprocessing method, inability to differentiate flow direction, and lack of hemodynamic time sequences. This study demonstrates a pitfall of CTA in diagnosis of SSS compared to more reliable hemodynamic information obtained by duplex and transcranial Doppler ultrasonography, and digital subtraction angiography.