Lipoblastoma and lipoblastomatosis: A report of two cases and review of the literature

Lipoblastoma and lipoblastomatosis are rare benign neoplasms of foetal whit e fat tissue that occur almost exclusively in infants and children. Two cas es are reported and a review of the literature is given. An almost one-year -old girl and a full-term male infant were brought to our hospital with a s olid mass in the right thigh. Nine months after total excision of the lipob lastoma, the little girl developed tumour recurrence, with unexpected histo pathological maturation. In the case of the little boy, lipoblastomatosis w ith infiltration of the surrounding muscles, together with involvement of t he sciatic and posterior femoral cutaneous nerves was found. Histologically , the tumour showed an unusual inflammatory reaction. The diagnosis of this tumour was made by the pathologist, but the histopath ological picture bears a striking similarity to myxoid liposarcoma, and may be indistinguishable. Recent studies describe rearrangements of chromosome 8q11-q13 region as a new discriminative marker that distinguishes lipoblas toma and lipoblastomatosis from myxoid liposarcoma.