Actor/comedian T. J. Miller was diagnosed with AVM after filming Yogi Bear in New Zealand in 2010; Miller described his experience with the disease on the Pete Holmes podcast You Made It Weird on October 28, 2011, shedding his comedian side for a moment and becoming more philosophical, narrating his behaviors and inability to sleep during that time. He had a seizure upon return to Los Angeles and successfully underwent surgery that had a mortality rate of ten percent. Jazz guitarist Pat Martino experienced an AVM and subsequently developed amnesia and manic depression. He eventually re-learned to play the guitar by listening to his own recordings from before the aneurysm. YouTube vlogger Nikki Lilly (Nikki Christou), winner of the 2016 season of Junior Bake Off was born with AVM, which has resulted in some facial disfigurement. Composer and lyricist William Finn was diagnosed with AVM and underwent Gamma Knife surgery in September 1992, soon after he won the 1992 Tony Award for best musical, awarded to "Falsettos". Finn wrote the 1998 Off-Broadway musical A New Brain about the experience. Former Florida Gators and Oakland Raiders linebacker Neiron Ball was diagnosed with AVM in 2011 while playing for Florida, but recovered and was cleared to play. On September 16, 2018, Ball was placed in a medically induced coma due to complications of the disease, which lasted until his death on September 10, 2019. Country music singer Drake White was diagnosed with AVM in January 2019, and is undergoing treatment.
Although AVMs are often associated with the brain and spinal cord, they can develop in other parts of the body.Normally, the arteries in the vascular system carry oxygen-rich blood, except in the case of the pulmonary artery. Structurally, arteries divide and sub-divide repeatedly, eventually forming a sponge-like capillary bed. Blood moves through the capillaries, giving up oxygen and taking up waste products, including CO2, from the surrounding cells. Capillaries in turn successively join to form veins that carry blood away. The heart acts to pump blood through arteries and uptake the venous blood.As an AVM lacks the dampening effect of capillaries on the blood flow, the AVM can get progressively larger over time as the amount of blood flowing through it increases, forcing the heart to work harder to keep up with the extra blood flow. It also causes the surrounding area to be deprived of the functions of the capillaries—removal of CO2 and delivery of nutrients to the cells. The resulting tangle of blood vessels, often called a nidus (Latin for "nest"), has no capillaries. It can be extremely fragile and prone to bleeding because of the abnormally direct connections between high-pressure arteries and low-pressure veins. The resultant sign, audible via stethoscope, is a rhythmic, whooshing sound caused by excessively rapid blood flow through the arteries and veins. It has been given the term "bruit", French for noise.