The Preventive Effect of Endovascular Treatment for Recurrent Hemorrhage in Patients with Spinal Cord Arteriovenous Malformations.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Spinal cord AVMs represent rare and insufficiently studied pathologic entities. Embolization is thought to play an important role in the management of spinal cord AVMs. Factors for recurrent hemorrhage and the impact of endovascular treatment on prevention of recurrent hemorrhage remain to be confirmed. We aimed to assess recurrent hemorrhagic incidence of spinal cord AVMs and its prevention by endovascular treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS We reviewed 80 patients with spinal cord AVMs by spinal cord angiography who had hemorrhage before the first endovascular treatment at New York University Medical Center, Beth Israel Medical Center, or Roosevelt Hospital in New York. We compared the baseline and radiologic characteristics of patients with and without recurrent hemorrhage by the log-rank test and the Cox proportional hazards model. RESULTS We observed recurrent hemorrhage in 35 (44%) patients (1/41 patients with endovascular treatment and 34/39 patients without endovascular treatment). The median length of total follow-up was 659 days (interquartile range, 129-2640 days), and the median length from first-to-recurrent hemorrhage was 369 days (interquartile range, 30-1596 days). The log-rank test revealed that endovascular treatment and venous thrombosis reduced recurrent hemorrhage, and associated aneurysm was related to recurrent hemorrhage. Even in multivariate analysis, the endovascular treatment reduced (hazard ratio, 0.027; P < .0001) and associated aneurysm increased (hazard ratio, 3.4; P = .044) the risk of recurrent hemorrhage. CONCLUSIONS Endovascular embolization is the first choice of treatment for spinal cord AVMs and is effective in preventing recurrent hemorrhage.