Pulmonary embolus as a complication of therapeutic peripheral arteriovenous malformation embolization

Therapeutic embolization is an established technique in interventional radiology. In our unit we have considerable experience in the use of this technique in the management of systemic arteriovenous malformations. During the embolization of systemic vascular lesions containing arteriovenous communications, there is a danger of embolic material being swept into the venous side of the circulation and causing pulmonary embolism. In a previous study of 137 patients treated in this way, overt pulmonary embolism was observed to occur in two patients (1.5%); we did not, however, determine the incidence of subclinical embolism in that series and are unaware of any other available data concerning this (Hemingway & Allison, 1988).