Treatment of 28 patients with sclerosing hemangioma (SH) of the lung

The medical records of 28 patients with SH from 1994 to 2010 at the Department of Thoracic Surgery in Beijing Chest Hospital were retrospectively reviewed.There were 3 male and 25 female patients with sclerosing hemangioma and 50% of the patients were asymptomatic. Preoperatively, all the patients had undergone CT of chest and 5 patients had undergone PET scan but 4 patients were misdiagnosed as malignancy. There was no operative mortality or tumor recurrence despite that three different operative methods were undertaken.SH has a high incidence in middle-aged women. Most of SH is asymptomatic and the symptoms of SH are not related to the tumor size and distribution. The features of chest CT and PET are not specific. Bilateral or multiple lesions should not exclude the possibility of SH. Complete excision of lesion is a curable treatment method and there is no evidence to verify the need of adjuvant therapy.Sclerosing hemangioma (SH) of the lung is a kind of rare pulmonary tumor which was first reported in 1956 by Liebow and Hubbel [1]. SH is composed of four histologic patterns including papillary, sclerotic, solid and hemorrhagic. At first the tumor was thought to be endothelial in origin, recently histochemical and ultrastructure studies suggested an epithelial (type II pneumocyte)origin [2]. Sclerosing hemangioma occurs in a wide age range (11-83 age)but is more common in middle-aged women [3,4] and has a higher incidence in Asia.It is now generally accepted that sclerosing hemangioma of the lung is benign lesions and surgical excision alone is curative. This report describes our experience of surgery treatment of 28 patients with sclerosing hemangioma.From March 1994 to July 2010, 28 patients with sclerosing hemangioma underwent surgical treatment at the Division of Thoracic Surgery in Beijing Chest Hospital. Their medical records, operative procedures, histological examinations and follow-up data were reviewed. Before reviewed the data, we had obtained the appr