Expert: Claes-Gustaf Nordquist, M.D. - 6/12/2008

Question
I have a very unique condition and I am very confused to what it even is.  Have you heard of something like this?  Below is what my doctor told me..
First thing was you were in a rollover accident and probably had headaches and not feeling well afterwards and then they did a CT scan and they saw this funny looking lesion.  And it is unusual.  It’s probably the only one that I’ve ever seen exactly like that
It’s not an easy spot to get to for surgery.  You don’t operate there unless you absolutely have to.  I’m convinced its not a tumor.  When they first did the CT scan, it looked like fatty material but then  we did an MRI, and the MRI showed that it had blood vessels in it.  Now fatty material shouldn’t have blood vessels, arteries coursing around in it so when we saw the MRI that we did here, it made us nervous that it was what’s called  an Arteriovenous Malformation.  AVM’s if you look on the internet  have a risk of bleeding, they have a risk of strokes in the area of the brain around it, they’re hard to remove.  This is not really  inside the brain. It’s between two lobes of the brain so after the  2nd radiologist read it and said no it’s an AVM ...what do you do when you have one radiologist reading this and another reading that and I looked at it and I saw parts of both, but I also saw blood and I said...now we’ve got three people that looked at it and one that says it’s fat, one that says it’s an AVM and one that says it’s all three plus blood.  

What do you think it is, or how do I explain what I have?

Answer
Sorry, this is probably not a tumor in a strict sense so in that case it is outside my area of expertise here. I'm a medical oncologist and radiation therapist with experience of TREATING brain tumors but not a neurosurgeon. This is most likely a case for a neuro surgeon, at least for evaluation. So I strongly suggest that you discuss this case with an expert of neurosurgery.