Vascular Tumors Of Skin And Soft Tissues

Vascular tumors are soft tissue proliferations composed of endothelial cells. They are a heterogenous group of lesions that can cause diagnostic difficulty. Tumors of blood and lymphatic vessels constitute a spectrum from benign hemangiomas to intermediate lesions that are locally aggressive but infrequently metastasize, to relatively, rare, highly malignant angiosarcomas. In addition, congenital or developmental malformations may present as tumor-like lesions, as do some non-neoplastic reactive vascular proliferations, such as bacillary angiomatosis.Hemangiomas can be indicators or clue signs for serious syndromes. Early recognition of problematic hemangiomas may help to minimize their future morbidity. Multiple cutaneous hemangiomas may be a sign of visceral hemangiomatosis, most often hepatic.It is interesting that, in comparison to other soft tissue tumors, cytogenetic and molecular genetic analysis has provided little useful information in vascular lesions, principally because these tumors are very hard to grow or maintain in culture and also because available material is often inextricably admixed with non-neoplastic tissue components.Keywords: Classification, hemangioma, hemangioendothelioma, Kaposi’s sarcoma, angiosarcoma.