Surgically Treated Epilepsy due to Developmental Venous Anomaly of the Brain: Case Report and Review of the Literature

Abstract

Background: A congenital malformation of the brain vessels, developmental venous anomaly (DVA) is considered a benign lesion, requiring no intervention unless symptomatic. Epilepsy is a well-known clinical manifestation of DVA. Successful surgery for DVA-associated epilepsy with has been sporadically reported in the literature; however, in all published cases, the anomaly was left intact along with the accompanying lesion. Here we present a surgical case of DVA located in the vicinity of the motor cortex causing drug-resistant simple partial epilepsy.

Case description: A 34-year-old man was referred due to medically intractable simple partial seizures. He was found to have DVA anterior to the motor cortex that was surgically removed. Following the surgical resection, the patient's seizures stopped, and there were no long-term complications of the procedure.

Conclusions: DVA removal can be performed in selected cases, but more studies are needed to assess the complication rate.

Keywords: Developmental venous anomaly; Epilepsy; Surgery.