Acute Endovascular Management of a Ruptured Choroidal Artery Arteriovenous Malformation in a Peripartum COVID-19-Positive Patient

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to significant reduction in specialty care causing delayed presentations and decreased resources for elective procedures. We present here a case of a 29-year-old female, 34 weeks primigravida who presented with a twice ruptured right choroidal artery arteriovenous malformation (AVM). She underwent an immediate external ventricular drain placement followed by an emergency cesarean. She underwent a diagnostic angiogram showing a right choroidal AVM with a feeder artery aneurysm along with small supply to its cortical component by the M4 segment of right middle cerebral artery, draining into the basal vein of Rosenthal and vein of Labbe. The patient underwent embolization of the aneurysm and the choroidal feeders. She improved symptomatically following the procedure with external cerebrospinal fluid diversion for 5 days. At follow-up magnetic resonance imaging, the residual AVM remained stable and is planned for Gamma knife radiosurgery. The newborn was taken care at a neonatal intensive care unit and was started on breastfeed on 16th day of birth once the mother had a negative COVID-19 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. In this study, we highlight our experience with the above-mentioned patient profile, the multidisciplinary effort during the pandemic, and the measures taken (isolation ward, COVID-19 dedicated Cath-lab and personal precautions) and advised for tackling COVID-19 patients for endovascular procedures.

Keywords

• arteriovenous malformation
• avm in pregnancy
• choroidal avm
• covid-19
• endovascular management of avm
• ruptured avm