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Spine Rapid Fire Abstract

Spine

Groin hematoma have a higher incidence in spinal angiograms than their cerebral counterparts: complications of spinal angiography across 4 institutions

Saturday, May 4, 2024
4:19 PM – 4:21 PM CT
Location:  S403ab
Disclosure(s):
Ashley R. Ricciardelli, BA: No financial relationships to disclose
Introduction: Spinal digital subtraction angiography is the gold standard for evaluation of spinal vascular disorders, but are performed far less frequently than their cerebral counterparts, resulting in a lack of data on complications. We sought to characterize complication rates for this procedure at our institutions.

Methods: A total of 41 patients, across 4 academic institutions over a 4 year period, undergoing spinal angiogram were retrospectively evaluated for intraprocedural and postprocedural neurologic, non-neurologic, and local complications.

Results: Patients undergoing spinal angiogram ranged from 3 months to 81 years old and indications ranged from diagnostic and/or embolization of primary tumors, metastases, spinal AVMs, and spinal dural AV fistulas. Average procedure time was 186 minutes. There were no intra- or postprocedural neurologic or non-neurologic complications. Overall, there were 4 groin hematomas in 41 patients (9.8%); 2 of which resolved without intervention, and two with manual pressure. No statistical significance was found between groin hematoma and BMI, antiplatelet use, anticoagulant use, sheath size, procedure length, presence of peripheral vascular disease, or closure device.

Conclusion : Spinal angiography has minimal complications. Groin hematomas appear to occur at higher rates in spinal angiograms (9.8%) than reported for cerebral angiograms (1.55%). We report procedure length for spinal angiograms to be up to 3 times longer than cerebral angiograms. Although no studied variables were found to reach significance for hematoma development, we hypothesize that longer procedure time and presumed arterotomy/dilated time may explain the higher rate of hematomas. Higher powered studies are needed to better understand etiology and prevention of groin hematomas in this understudied procedure.