Angiolipoma

The classical history of a patient with angiolipoma is that of a young person who notices, shortly after puberty, one or two small, painful "lumps" under the skin. These are followed by the appearance of 2 or 3 more each year, for a number of years. The nodules of angiolipoma may be interpreted clinically as lipomas, but the degree of vascularity is much greater than that of the simple lipoma when examined microscopically. The tumor is sometimes called a vascular lipoma by the pathologist or—depending on its composite ratio of fat cells, capillaries, and stroma—an angiolipoma, angiofibrolipoma, or even a benign mesenchymoma. After we had examined hundreds of fatty tumors, it appeared to us that there is a tumor which fulfills the criteria of angiolipoma. It is the purpose of this study to correlate the clinical and histologic characteristics of the angiolipoma and to determine the course of development.

Materials