A Case of Pleomorphic Lipoma in the Scalp

Park, Hong Pyo; Kim, Ki Joon; Kim, Young Jo; Chung, Byoung Soo

Abstract

Pleomorphic lipoma is a asymptomatic, slowly growing, solitary, well-circumscribed dermal or subcutaneous benign tumor. The neck, shoulder region and back are the sites of predilection. On gross examination, the lesion resembles an ordinary lipoma. However microscopically, a misdiagnosis of liposarcoma is often made, on occasion leading to excessive and unnecessary surgical procedures. Smookler and Enzinger described 48 cases of lipomatous tumors having bizarre histologic features, but a benign clinical course. The term "pleomorphic lipoma" was selected to refer to these tumors. To date, there have been only three case reports of pleomorphic lipoma in the dermatologic literature. We describe a case of pleomorphic lipoma that developed as a subcutaneous nodule on the scalp of 72-year-old man, and showed a typical histopathologic findings of pleomorphic lipoma.