Rapidly Growing Chest Wall Lipoma: Case Report and Calculating Volume Doubling Time

Maedica (Bucur). 2023 Sep;18(3):523-527. doi: 10.26574/maedica.2023.18.3.523.

Abstract

Chest wall lipoma is a rare disease that might be asymptomatic and discovered incidentally. Chest wall lipomas are presumed to grow slowly, but no reports have evaluated the tumor volume doubling time (TVDT). The present study herein reports the case of a 35-year-old female patient with a relatively fast-growing chest wall lipoma. Lipomas have their characteristic shape and grow very slowly, so they are rarely completely resected, even though they are monitored and repeated imaging studies are performed. Homogeneous very low density, clear margins, and no invasion to the surrounding structure are characteristic finding on imaging, but some patients without these characteristics here have been reported here. As there has been no report of TVDT for chest wall lipoma, comparison was not possible, but TDVT for lipoma in this patient ranged from 235-412 days. Compared with reports that patients with non-small cell lung cancer showed TVDT of less than 450 days, TVDT in the patient described here did not appear to be slow. Accumulation of knowledge about this rare disease will help to elucidate it further.

Publication types

  • Editorial