To explore the quality of life and its influencing factors in patients with unruptured cerebral arteriovenous malformation (UCAVM).

A retrospective inclusion was conducted to analyze 34 patients of untreated UCAVM who were admitted to Department of Neurosurgery, General Hospital of Shenyang Military Command from January 2005 to December 2015 (UCAVM group). During the same period, 40 health controls undergoing physical examination at our hospital were enrolled to this study (control group). All subjects were investigated in the form of face-to-face interviews with the same physician. The content of survey was based on SF-36 health survey scale to assess the quality of life of all subjects. The difference in the quality of life between the UCAVM and control groups was studied and multivariate linear regression was used to analyze the clinical factors affecting the patients’ quality of life in UCAVM group.

There was no statistical significance in age, sex, years of education or monthly household per capita income between the 2 groups (P>0.05). The scores of vitality (P<0.001), social functioning (P=0.001), emotional functions (P=0.024), mental health (P<0.001) and mental component summary (P<0.001) in UCAVM group were all lower than those in control group, which suggested that the patient’s mental health was damaged. There was no statistical significance in the difference of physical functioning (P=0.114), role physical (P=0.845), bodily pain (P=0.356), general health (P=0.512) or physical component summary (P=0.299) between the 2 groups, which suggested that there was no obvious change in physical health. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that headache and epilepsy were main factors affecting the mental health score of UCAVM group (both P<0.001).

Patients harboring untreated UCAVM may have reduced quality of life which was mainly reflected in mental health and involved headache and epilepsy as main influencing factors.

Cerebral arteriovenous malformation; Quality of life; Root cause analysis