Duke's Cerebrovascular Center offers the entire spectrum of treatment for spinal arteriovenous malformation (AVM).

Spinal AVMs are essentially a short circuit where high pressure blood going into arteries gets channeled directly into low pressure veins that are supposed to drain the spinal cord, causing blood to back up inside the veins.

This rare disease can cause spinal injury by decreasing the amount of blood available to the spinal cord, causing compression of the spinal cord with the engorged veins, or causing bleeding into the spinal cord.

Diagnosis

If patients have either sudden or progressive loss of function in their arms or legs, they are suspected of having a spinal AVM. We use a spinal MRI to exclude more commons diseases such as degenerative spinal discs and tumors.

Once we exclude other possible problems, we use spinal angiography to confirm that the patient does have spinal AVM.

Treatment

The treatment of spinal AVMs is quite complex, but, at Duke, we offer the entire spectrum of treatment for spinal AVMs, including embolization, surgery, and radiosurgery.

We offer the following treatment options to eradicate the AVMs:

• Embolization
• Microsurgical treatment
• Radiation

Appointments

For information about scheduling an appointment with a specific doctor, visit the Contact Us page.

Physicians

Physicians offering this service include:

• Enterline, David S.
  • Radiology / Neuroradiology
• Kirkpatrick, John P.
  • Radiation Oncology / Radiation Onc-Clinical Sup
  • Surgery / Neurosurgery
• Smith, Tony P.
  • Radiology / Vasc/Intervention Radiology
• Zomorodi, Ali R.
  • Surgery / Neurosurgery

Locations

This service is available at:

• Duke Raleigh Hospital
  3400 Wake Forest Road, Raleigh, NC 27609
• Duke University Hospital
  2301 Erwin Road, Durham, NC 27710