Abstracts

Rationale: Objectives : Venous angioma is a congenital anomaly of the medullary vein which drains into the transparenchymal venous stem. The Cases associated with headache, convulsion and hemorrhage have been reported, but date showed inconsistent evidence if venous angioma is a seizure prone lesion or has a potential for epileptogenesis. Our objective is to clarify the relationship between venous angioma and epilepsy and analyze the clinical and laboratory characteristics of the patients with epilepsy. Methods: We reviewed 2835 patients under 20 years old who had taken brain MRI between Jan. 2004 and Jul. 2008 in our hospital. We excluded the patients with other pathologic findings in brain MRI. We compared the prevalence of epilepsy between patients with venous angioma and control group with normal finding. We also analyzed the clinical and laboratory characteristics of the patients with epilepsy and venous angioma. Results: Nine of 17 patients with venous angima (35%) had epilepsy in contrast to 134 of 1105 (11%) in control group (P=0.00014). The location of venous angioma were frontal (9), temporal(2), parietal(5), occipital(2), basal ganglia(2), cerebellum(4) and brainstem(2). Four of 20 patients (20%) with venous angioma in cerebral hemispheres had epilepsy while 5 of 6 patients (83%) with venous angioma in cerebellum and brainstem (P=0.004). Among the nine patients with epilepsy and venous angioma, 5 patients(56%) showed abnormal EEG findings. Interestingly, the lesions in these 5 patients were located in cerebellum and brainstem. Conclusions: Our study reveals that venous angioma is a risk factor of epilepsy. Venous angiomas located especially in cerebellum and brainstem are significantly associated with epilepsy and EEG abnormality than in cerebral hemispheres.