Introduction

Hi there,

My name is Samuel or "Sam" for short. As you all know, I am writing this blog to share my experiences of surviving the rarest type of stroke known to medical science. The stroke that I am referring to is none other than a Hemorrhagic Stroke. This type of stroke is caused when there's bleeding in the brain. The cause of most cases of brain hemmoraghes can come down to a couple of factors, most of them being genetical or endovascular disorders that are present from birth or appear afterward during our development. An example of these endovascular disorders would be aneurysms and AVMs. Aneurysms are very common in most cases of hemorrhagic strokes, this is when there's a weakening in the cell walls of the arteries and throughout the time the pressure inside the arteries build up causing the weaken cell walls to bulge outwards that form these aneurysms.

An AVM, however, is a bit different, this is when there is a misconnection between our arteries and the veins. in a normal blood circulation, the arteries would carry blood from our hearts to all parts of the body and branch out into smaller vessels known as capillaries before connecting with the veins, the blood vessel that takes back blood to the heart. In an AVM, the capillaries aren't present in the circulation system and this is dangerous because the capillaries help dilate the blood pressure to become lower before entering the veins since our veins can only transport blood at a lower pressure, while our arteries carry blood with a higher pressure. Because these two vessels connect directly in an AVM circulation, intense pressure would often build up in the veins, causing an Aneurysm or hypoxia(decrease of oxygen). Once hypoxia occurs, this can cause other unused arteries to grow into the area where hypoxia is present to supply the oxygen. At times too many of the arteries would grow towards the area with hypoxia and would get tangled to one another, forming a Nidus ( Latin for nest ) It's this Nidus that will potentially become a ticking time bomb that would eventually rupture and cause a stroke. Below is an image describing the formation of an AVM in the brain

it's still not clear why AVM's form. Some suggest that a mutation in chromosome 17 is the culprit. Most tend to form in the brain but they can form anywhere in the body as long as there are veins and arteries present. Most cases of AVM rupture happen to people within the age groups of 19 to 25 years old, however, there have been cases of rupture during infancy or early childhood.



The dangers of AVMs is that they are mostly asymptomatic. in some rare cases, they would give symptoms such as headaches, confusion, hallucinations and speech impairments depending on where the AVM is located. The only best solution to identify the presence of an AVM is to conduct Angiography to identify the circulatory vessels of the body, this, in turn, will identify the possible formation of an AVM.