Multimorphic Vascular Anomaly

Abstract

Objective: To describe a rare case of multimorphic vascular anomaly.

Method: A 7-year-old boy presented for massive congenital tumors in the intraorbital, right frontoparietal, and nasal tip areas. After excision, pathological evaluation revealed the intraorbital lesion consistent with lymphatic malformation. The frontoparietal mass was a cavernous hemangioma. The nasal lesion was a soft tissue hamartoma.

Results: A growing body of clinical, histological, and radiological evidence supports the conclusion that vascular tumors of childhood represent a number of distinct entities with diverse etiologies and clinical behaviors. Immunohistochemical and gene expression analyses yielded important clues regarding these etiologies. An absolute requisite of meaningful diagnosis and study of these lesions is precise histopathological description, combined with clinical and radiological evaluation.

Conclusion: Unfortunately, overgeneric use of the term hemangioma has led to inappropriate grouping of entities that we now know are dissimilar, hampering research efforts and causing problems when making comparisons between cases reported in the literature. This patient had 3 different tumors according to pathological evaluation.