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Whilst taking into account your personal preferences, the risks of leaving your vascular malformation alone need to be weighed up against the risks and benefits of treatment. If you attend a specialist clinic, a team of doctors may be involved in making this decision with you. The aim of treatment is to protect you from developing any future problems related to your vascular malformation by getting rid of it completely. Treatment cannot undo any damage that has already been done to your brain. Sometimes, the best policy may be to have no treatment at all. There is a need for more research into the treatment of vascular malformations.

The three main methods of treating vascular malformations are embolisation, stereotactic radiosurgery and neurosurgery. Embolisation involves the injection of particles to block off the blood vessels of AVMs of the brain and dura. Stereotactic radiosurgery uses radiation to treat small vascular malformations, mainly AVMs less than three centimetres across and is very occasionally also used to treat cavernous malformations. Neurosurgery is another name for a surgical operation on your brain to disconnect an AVM of the brain or dura from the arteries that supply it and the veins that drain it, or to remove a cavernous malformation.

You may have one treatment only, a combination of different treatments, or in the case of embolisation, several separate treatments.

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Last updated 15 June 2009