They are usually a bengin tumors composed of adipose tissue usually occurring in ages between 40 and 60. About one percent of the human beings have lipomas of any type. Its usually appearing as subcutaneous mass. Its soft , movable and in most cases it is painless. It may then be transformed ti malignant type tumors, but there is no a proven evidence for that yet.
Types of Lipomas
• Adenolipoma: this is the type of adipose tissue tumor that occur in the sweat glands.
• Angiolipoleiomyomas: these are subcutaneous tumors composed of blood vessels, fat, muscle cells and connective tissue.
• Angiolipomas: these are the painful type of subcutaneous lipomas.
• Superficial subcutaneous lipomas: this is the most common type of subcutaneous adipose tumors that occur just below the skin surface and it may occur in different parts of the body.
• Other types which occur rarely are Chondroid lipomas, Corpus callosum lipoma, Hibernomas, Intradermal spindle cell lipomas and neural fibrolipomas. We will not deal in details of types because they occur rarely.
Causes of Lipoma
There are two main causes shown to be in relation with the development of lipoma. First the family history, some late researches showed that there is a hereditary genes that may make people more susceptible to develop lipoma than others. Second there is some theories that had proven that some lipomas develop after injuries but this is not well proven till now.
Treatment of Lipomas
As we said before that most of lipomas are not painful and are small sized so treatment is not important in all cases., but there are some cases where the lipoma become painful or it become of large size preventing normal body movement or if it is most be removed for cosmotic reasons, Finally surgical excision is a must when there are signs of transformation to other malignant types are seen like liposarcomas or other malignant tumors.
Usually excision occurs by minor surgical operations in most cases using local anesthetics. New techniques include liposuction but only with those soft lipomas lacking excessive connective tissues. Finally lipomas can be treated by local injection of compounds that stimulate lipolysis.
Prognosis of lipomas
Usually lipomas don’t lead to more complications except in rare cases, so the patient that develop lipoma can maintain a normal life without suffering even if not treated at all .As we said most cases of lipomas are painless, small sized and so it is of no harm. Something to take into consideration that if it become larger in size in a short period of time of time, clinical examination must be done immediately as we still have the fear of transformation from the benign type lipomas to the most dangerous and life threatening malignant type liposarcomas.
In this cases direct surgical excision must be done to remove the whole tumor as early as possible then histopathological examination must be done to determine it’s type and if it is proven to be malignant special post operative medications must be administered to avoid further metastasis allover the body.
No comments:
Post a Comment