Chest wall lipoma mimicking intrathoracic mass: Imaging with surgical correlation

Abstract

Lipoma is the most frequent benign soft-tissue tumor. It originates from fat cells. According to position, it is distinguished in superficial, typically subcutaneous lipoma, or deep, such as intramuscular lipoma. This latter form is infrequently and may resemble well-differentiated liposarcoma. For this reason, early radiological detection and characterization are necessary to obtain a wide complete resection and histopathologic evaluation to differentiate benign from malign lesions. We report an extremely rare case of an intrathoracic intramuscular lipoma of the chest wall detect and characterize with chest X-ray and computed tomography examinations, resected with thoracoscopic intervention and confirmed with histopathologic analysis. Keywords: Intramuscular lipoma, Intrathoracic lipoma, Radiologic detection, Thoracoscopic resection