Treatment of Large Lipoma by Arthroscopic Shaver / 대한피부과학회지

ABSTRACT

Lipoma is one of the most common benign tumors of soft tissue which tends to be left untreated due to unremarkable clinical features and its property of slow growth. It comes to clinical attention only when it causes concern of malignancy because of inordinate size or is perceived as faults in need of cosmetic removal and consequently the incision line is, frequently long and may result in high risk of intra- and postoperative complications such as hematoma and hypertropic scars. So it requires cosmetically acceptable and convenient methods for treatment of lipoma, especially located in the exposed area. The liposuction was tried to get less complications and smaller incision line. But for deep seated variants of lipoma they tend to be less well-circumscribed and often have thick fibrous septa around the lipoma, simple liposuction showed some limitations. So we tried the new liposuction method using arthroscopic shaver for 5 patients having lipomas larger than 5 cm in diameter. The surgery was performed with arthroscopic shaver system equipped with a motorized blade rotating in the suction cannula and emulsifying the lipoma tissue for easy aspiration. The aspirated material was collected and examined histopathologically to rule out the evidence of malignancy. Lipomas were removed completely without any remarkable complications, and no recurrence was seen till three years after surgery. The new method was easier to operate and took less operation time and left only small incision line.