A retrospective prospective study of 84 cases of subarachnoid haemorrhage, 24 intracranial aneurysms and 18 arteriovenous malformations (AVM's) treated in the University Hospital, Kuala Lumpur, during the post CT-scan era was carried out to verify the relative frequencies of these clinical entities in the Malaysian population. Our results show that aneurysms are commoner than arteriovenous malformations as a cause of subarachnoid haemorrhage and also the most frequent as a whole, thus refuting the previous claims that AVM's are 4 to 10 times more common than aneurysms in this part of the world. Of interest was the internal carotid artery aneurysms accounted for half of the anterior circulation aneurysms and that 2/3 of the AVM's presented with intracranial haemorrhage.
A case of an intracerebral bleed in a young man with a rare combination of arteriovenous malformation (AVM) and unilateral moyamoya disease is presented. The location of the bleed in the left basal ganglia corresponded to the area supplied by the basal moyamoya vessels. The AVM which received supply from collateral moyamoya vessels as well as normal cerebral arteries was located in the ipsilateral parieto-occipital region posterior to the basal ganglia bleed. This is the first reported cerebral AVM co-existing with a unilateral moyamoya disease in the English literature. Unusual features of the case such as the unilaterality of the angiographic abnormalities, their coexistence and hypotheses as to their development are discussed.