Pulmonary arteriovenous malformation (PAVM) embolization: prediction of angiographically-confirmed recanalization...

To assess pulmonary arteriovenous malformation (PAVM) recanalization after embolization based on PAVM diameter changes on computed tomography (CT), with pulmonary angiography used as a gold standard.

A retrospective review was done of patients from 2008 to 2019 with a PAVM treated with endovascular embolization. The treatment outcome was determined by conventional angiography. Follow-up pulmonary angiography was performed when recanalization was suspected on CT, or embolization of all lesions in multiple PAVM patients could not be completed in a single session. Patients who had no preprocedural or follow-up CT were excluded. Draining vein, feeding artery, and venous sac diameter were measured on CT, and diameter reduction rates were compared with the widely-used, binary 70 % criteria.

Forty-one patients with 114 PAVMs were treated during the study period. Eight patients with 50 PAVMs met the inclusion criteria. Mean vein, artery, and venous sac diameter reduction rates were as follows: 59.2 ± 9.3 %, 47.5 ± 10.6 %, and 62.6 ± 13.2 %, respectively, in the occluded group and 5.4 ± 19.5 %, 11.3 ± 17.7 %, and 26.8 ± 14.2 %, respectively, in the recanalized group. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves for PAVM recanalization for the draining vein was 1.00, showing a better result than the artery (0.97) and sac (0.99). Patients showed > 42 % draining vein diameter reduction in the occluded group and < 32 % in the recanalized group. The widely-used 70 % criteria showed low specificity for predicting recanalization (draining vein, 7.3 %; venous sac, 41.7 %) but 100 % sensitivity for both the draining vein and venous sac.

The widely-used 70 % binary criteria showed limited performance in predicting outcomes in this angiographically-confirmed case series. Further investigations are warranted to establish a strategy for detecting recanalization after PAVM embolization.