Imaging Science in Dentistry  2015;45(2):123-131

doi:10.5624/isd.2015.45.2.123

The current approach to the diagnosis of vascular anomalies of the head and neck: A pictorial essay.

Sinny GOEL 1 ; Swati GUPTA ; Aarti SINGH ; Anjali PRAKASH ; Sujoy GHOSH ; Poonam NARANG ; Sunita GUPTA

Affiliations

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Keywords

Hemangioma; Vascular Malformation; Classification; Neck

Country

Republic of Korea

Language

English

Abstract

Throughout the years, various classifications have evolved for the diagnosis of vascular anomalies. However, it remains difficult to classify a number of such lesions. Because all hemangiomas were previously considered to involute, if a lesion with imaging and clinical characteristics of hemangioma does not involute, then there is no subclass in which to classify such a lesion, as reported in one of our cases. The recent classification proposed by the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies (ISSVA, 2014) has solved this problem by including non-involuting and partially involuting hemangioma in the classification. We present here five cases of vascular anomalies and discuss their diagnosis in accordance with the ISSVA (2014) classification. A non-involuting lesion should not always be diagnosed as a vascular malformation. A non-involuting lesion can be either a hemangioma or a vascular malformation depending upon its clinicopathologic and imaging characteristics.