For those interested, late in 2024 there was a study published by Uni of Edinburgh that showed some great results (in vivo) for new nanotech-driven embolization. I guess we will find out more soon, as I hear they are continuing with it.
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This is probably most relevant to our sister support community bafsupport.org
With an AVM, the objective is to completely close the connection rather than to stent past an aneurysm. Obviously some people have arterial aneurysms associated with their AVM. I’ll mention it in BAF support.
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Fascinating thanks. Keep up the research
I find this interesting now that you’ve mentioned it. Based on my conversations with doctors in Canada, Germany and Romania, I was under the impression that embolization is the preferred option for treatment for most AVMs nowadays, since the risks are a lot more manageable and generally lower than they are with surgery. The problem I had with mine was that it was too small for embo. Something like a nano-driven embo could potentially open up doors for treatments for a bunch of those, deep, “untouchable” AVMs (I would hope lol). But then again, reflecting on this, I still see ?most? of the newer group members going through surgery, so now it doesn’t add up lol.
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The other part of the equation is that this is an English language forum, so the main group of people here live in the United States. I tend to feel that craniotomy is the preferred route still in the US and this skews our perception as I agree with you that in other places embolization alone is a bit more frequent.
Why do I think this is? Possibly, there are incentives to make more money from patients and their insurance in places like the US, whereas in the UK for example the incentive is closer to what is the minimum I need to spend on my patients so that I can get the [always limited] funds to address more cases?
In Romania at least, the general perception historically was that if you are a surgeon and you do not go for surgeries, especially risky ones … you are not a good surgeon (
I KNOW). So nowadays surgeons going for the “best outcome” are highly seen by the public but kinda mocked within the system. I’m sure this is not a foreign phenomenon in other countries either. And then, as you said, you add on top of that the big push from an economic perspective. Anywaay, as much as I like those chats, I don’t want to deviate from the topic a lot. The important thing is that we’re seeing advancements 
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Agreed. And it’s interesting to see the rise of embolization as a mode of treatment, not least having had only embolization myself.