Hello, sorry if I m bothering anyone with this post.
I was wondering if anyone can and want to show me how their avms looks or looked.
Thank you so much!
I wish everyone is well!
Hi. I don’t have a picture of mine. Mine was described as a shunt and was connected into my right transverse sinus.
On the MRI that I was shown (and remember, an MRI is a slice through the brain) it was simply a white dot just inside the back of my skull. The white indicated high flow blood and basically there was a white dot on one side and no corresponding dot on the other side because this was an erroneous blood vessel that shouldn’t have been there.
A more complete view is often visible on an angiogram, where contrast material is injected at a point in one of your arteries and a number of images taken on x-ray as the contrast flows away from that point: the x-ray compresses three dimensions into a flat two dimensional image: the shapes of the illuminated vessels can be seen.
Usually, an AVM appears like a tangle of vessels, sometimes, perhaps often, with an enlarged vessel. Some vessels are unusual shapes, so you need to know what “normal” looks like or to compare left hemisphere with right, as this is an easier way for people like you and me to be able to see a difference: obviously our doctors are familiar with what things usually look like.
The other thing I’d say is that we are all different: there is nothing about anatomy that says that we all have the same things in the same places! There are variations in much of anatomy, so again it comes down to the doctors having that understanding of what different layouts mean, if anything, what is a common pattern and what is unusual and/or of concern.
Best wishes,
Richard