Vascular nevi in children.
BACKGROUND
Vascular nevi are cutaneous anomalies of angiogenesis and vasculogenesis resulting in various different clinical presentations.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of our descriptive study was to observe the various types of vascular nevi in children and their features.


METHODS
A total of 4256 pediatric cases attending the dermatology OPD during the study period from August 2002 to August 2004 were screened for vascular nevi.


RESULTS
Out of these, 19 children (0.44%) had vascular nevi-17 hemangiomas of infancy (HOIs) and 2 port-wine stains. The mean age of the affected children was 1.3 years (ranging from 2.5 months to 8 years). There were 13 girls and 6 boys. Seventeen (89.5%) patients had progressing lesions and two (10.5%) had non-involuting ones. A solitary lesion was seen in ten (52.6%) cases and two to five lesions were present in five (26.3%) cases. The nevi were distributed over multiple sites in seven (36.8%) cases, the head and neck in six (31.6%) cases, the chest and lower limb in two (10.5%) cases each, and the upper limbs and genitalia in one (5.3%) case each. Among the hemangiomas of infancy, 15 (88.2%) cases of superficial type and 2 (11.8%) cases of deep type were seen. The cutaneous complications included ulceration in four cases and infection in one.


CONCLUSIONS
HOIs were the most common vascular nevi of childhood.
Senthilkumar
M
M
Department of Dermatology and STD, JIPMER, Pondicherry, India.
Thappa
Devinder Mohan
DM
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006258:Head and Neck Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D006391:Hemangioma / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009506:Nevus / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D019339:Port-Wine Stain / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology