Isolated hepatic lymphangiomas in children: Two case reports

Abstract

Hepatic lymphangiomas are a category of benign tumours of the liver lymphatic system, extremely rare in adults (Lee and Lee, 2016; Liu et al., 2014) [1, 2] and uncommon in children (Ferrero et al., 2017) [3].The clinical presentation is highly polymorphic, but most of them are discovered during routine examination and have no specific clinical presentation (Makni et al., 2012) [4]. Knowing that this pathology is quite rare, the differential diagnosis includes multiple other conditions and the surgical resection has many options, mainly based on the size of the tumour and its location (hepatic segments), our aim is to report our cases in order to provide a solid basis in understanding the best diagnostic method and course of treatment.Between 2017 and 2019, two cases of hepatic lymphangioma were referred to our hospital and both are reviewed in this case report. The aim of the surgical treatment is to remove the hepatic mass preserving as much hepatic normal tissue as possible and subsequent pathologic analysis of the resected specimen. At the moment of the surgery the age of one patient was 10 months old (male patient) and 9 years old (female patient). The common clinical features were unspecific: recurrent pain in the upper right abdominal quadrant and relative abdominal distension. The methods of examination in both cases were laboratory tests and imaging studies. Neither patient presented postoperative complications, death or recurrences. Keywords: Hepatic, Lymphangiomas, Pediatric surgery, Resection