Pediatric Lipoma

  • Etiology: Proliferation of mature fat tissue
  • Imaging US: Subcutaneous lesion that has variable appearance (isocechoic, hyperechoic, hypoechoic to adjacent subcutaneous fat) and therefore not 100% diagnostic
  • Imaging US Color Doppler: Minimal flow
  • Imaging CT: Negative Hounsfield unit is diagnostic
  • Note: Imaging cannot 100% reliably differentiate between lipoma, lipoblastoma, liposarcoma
  • DDX: If patient is very young consider lipoblastoma, if lesion is painful or hyperechoic and or vascular consider angiolipoma
  • Complications:
  • Treatment:
  • Clinical:
    — Most common fatty tumor in children
    — Painless and slow growing but growth may accelerate with weight gain

Radiology Cases of Lipoma

CT of lipoma of the chest wall and thigh
Axial CT without contrast shows a symmetrical appearing chest wall (top), a fat density center-right sided chest wall mass (middle) and a fat density anterior left thigh mass (bottom).