By Will Boggs, MD
The rapid growth of reddish skin tumours called infantile hemangiomas requires close observation in the first months of life, according to a report in the journal Pediatrics. Treatment should be undertaken promptly.
Infantile hemangiomas are non-cancerous tumours that can grow rapidly during infancy, but usually resolve by nine years of age. Hemangiomas are the most common tumours in infants and, aside from cosmetic concerns, most have no medical significance.
"Not all hemangiomas need treatment - actually the majority does not - but a significant minority does," Dr. Ilona J. Frieden told Reuters Health. "So the real message of our study is that patients with hemangiomas that are at high-risk for complication or need... treatment should be identified early and referred as soon as possible."
Frieden from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues determined the specific growth characteristics of hemangiomas in 433 infants with a total of 526 hemangiomas.
"Eighty percent of hemangioma size was reached" by five months of age in most cases, the researchers report, and overall growth was nearly always completed by nine months of age.
During the first 18 months of life, hemangiomas affecting only the upper layers of skin were more likely to start resolving, whereas deeper hemangiomas were more likely to continue growing.
Though parents noticed most hemangiomas within one month of age, the investigators say, the infants were five months of age, on average, when they were first taken to a dermatologist.
Most hemangiomas reached 80 percent of their maximum size by the tine the infants were five months old, suggesting that physicians need to start referring affected infants to specialists earlier in life, the authors conclude.
"One major reason for this is that current treatments work best when instituted early," Frieden said. "By five months of age the majority of growth is actually over and the opportunity to prevent complications in many cases has already passed."