title: Surgical management of intramedullary cavernous angiomas and analysis pain relief.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this study was to conduct a retrospective analysis of the clinical characteristics of 20 individuals with intramedullary cavernous angiomas (ICA) presented with serious pain complaints. This study was to investigate the efficacy of short- and long-term pain relief following surgical resection.
  
  
  METHODS
  Between 2006 and 2012, 55 patients with ICA were surgically managed in our institution. Of these 20 (36.4%) patients presented with serious pain as a unique clinical feature. Numerical pain scores (NPS: 0-10) were used to assess the patients' pain levels preoperatively, as well as at 1 month and 1 year postoperatively. All the patients had magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) preoperatively and during follow-up. IBM SPSS Statistics 19.0 was used to analysis the outcomes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 20 patients with ICA, 9 (45%) required cervical and 11 (55%) thoracic surgery. Seven (35%) patients presented with radicular pain and 13 (65%) presented with central pain. Pain improved from a total mean preoperative score of 8.60 to total mean score of 2.95 (P < 0.01) at one month and 3.35 (P < 0.01) at one year post-surgery. However, the pain symptoms completely disappeared in the long-term follow-up only in three (15%) patients. Five (25%) patients reported new pain symptoms with no lesion reoccurrence postoperatively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Pain is the common complaint in patients with ICA. Surgery is effective in providing short- and long-term pain relief. However, long-term follow-up measures on postoperative pain levels show that the pain does recur in the months following surgery.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosurgery, Sichuan University, West China Hospital, Sichuan, China.
authors.forename: Huang Si
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Qing
authors.forename: Gong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Shuhui
authors.forename: Liu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiagang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006392:Hemangioma, Cavernous / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013120:Spinal Cord Neoplasms / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D016896:Treatment Outcome