ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2005 June;24(2):173-84

Copyright © 2005 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Advanced management of arteriovenous shunting malformation with transarterial lung perfusion scintigraphy for follow-up assessment

Lee B. B. ^{1, 2}, Mattassi R. ³, Kim Y. W. ⁴, Kim B. T. ⁴, Park J. M. ⁴, Choi J. Y. ⁴

¹ Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA 2 CVM Clinic, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Korea 3 CVM Clinic, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Korea and University Bicocca of Milan, Italy and Department of Vascular Surgery, G. Salvini Hospital, Milan, Italy 4 Departments of Surgery and Nuclear Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine and Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Korea

Aim. The clinical assessment of arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), including treatment response (surgical and/or embolosclerotherapy), has traditionally been done by arteriography, mainly by looking for residual lesions. However, arteriography is disadvantaged as it is an expensive invasive test with high morbidity and provides only limited anatomical information at the qualitative level. Here, transarterial lung perfusion scintigraphy (TLPS), which was developed as a less invasive test for the physiologic assessment of the arteriovenous shunting status of AVM lesions located in the lower extremities, was evaluated for its ability to replace traditional arteriography as a means of following-up treatment results.
Methods. The shunting volume of radioisotope-tagged macro-aggregated albumin injected into the arterial system of the affected limb was counted by TLPS before and after AVM treatment, as a quantitative measure of treatment response. The findings obtained were compared with a matching duplex scan, whole body blood pool scintigraphy (WBBPS) findings, and arteriographic findings.
Results. Twenty-one TLPS tests were performed as follow-up assessments on 15 patients with AVM in the extremity, who underwent multistaged embolo/sclerotherapy alone or combined with surgical therapy. These 21 TLPS findings, including 6 interim TLPS results (average 16 months follow-up), provided quantitative measurements of lesion reductions as percentile ratios versus the baseline pretreatment values. Matching posttreatment duplex scan (14 out of 17 sets) and WBBPS (12 out of 15 sets) findings confirmed the posttreatment TLPS assessment results. In addition, all 12 available arteriographic studies confirmed the matching TLPS findings.
Conclusion. TLPS can provide accurate information on shunting volume reduction, occurring in response to various treatments during or after the completion of therapy. TLPS, therefore, may be able to replace arteriography, and provide a reliable means of follow-up assessment for the determination of the future treatment strategy.