Background: Port-wine stains (PWS) are congenital low-flow vascular malformations of the skin. PWS tend to become thicker and darker with time. Laser therapy is the gold standard and the first-line therapy for treating PWS. However, some resistant PWS, or PWS that have tissue hypertrophy, do not respond to this therapy. Our aim is to evaluate the role of surgery in the treatment of PWS birthmarks.
Methods: A literature search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science (WOS) and Google Scholar for all papers dealing with surgery for port-wine stains, from January 2010 to December 2020 using the search strings: (capillary vascular malformation OR port-wine stains OR Sturge Weber Syndrome OR sws OR pws) AND (surgical OR surgery).
Results: Ten articles were identified and used for analysis. They were almost all case series with a short follow up period and lacked an objective-systematic score of evaluation.
Conclusions: Delay in treatment of port wine stains may result in soft tissue and bone hypertrophy or nodules with disfiguring or destructive characteristics. The correction of PWS-related facial asymmetry often requires bone surgery followed by soft tissue corrections to achieve a more harmonious, predictable result.
Keywords: capillary malformations; laser therapy; port-wine stains; surgery; tissue hypertrophy.