Osteolipoma of the skull base

Abstract

Although lipomas are the most common benign tumours of the head and neck, the involvement of the skull base is rare and it is also very rare for a lipoma to undergo osseous metaplasia to become an ossifying lipoma or osteolipoma. We present a case of a solitary osteolipoma involving the skull base in a 17-year-old girl. A few cases of osteolipoma involving the head and neck have been reported, but this may be the first reported case of a solitary osteolipoma involving the skull base with extension to the infratemporal fossa and parapharyngeal space. The computed tomography (CT) scan helped to clinch the diagnosis and the histopathology confirmed it. The clinical presentation, role of CT scan, surgical approach used, histological features and the review of literature are discussed.

Subcutaneous ossifying lipoma: case report and review of the literature

“…In addition, they described three more cases of lipomas with bone, all arising in the soft tissues of the extremities. Subsequently, there were a few other descriptions of this tumor, including cases in the soft tissues of the trunk and the extremities, 9–15 the joint space of the knee, 16 the retropharyngeal region, 17 the parapharyngeal space, 18,19 the oral cavity, 20–24 the oropharynx, 25 the neck, 26 the skull base 27 and both the intraspinal 28,29 and intracranial cavities 30–33 . The case reported by Setoyama et al 15 as benign mesenchymoma is regarded by us as an OL.…”

Osteochondrolipoma of the Submandibular Region: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

“…A review of the English literature found that, outside the head and neck area, lipomas with osseous differentiation have been reported in deep locations adjacent to bone tissue in the thigh [10][11][12][13], knee [14,15], sternoclavicular region [16], shoulder [17], wrist [14], hand [18], intraspinal [19] or in superficial subcutaneous tissue [20,21]. More than 60 % of the cases occur in the head and neck region, where they have been described in intraspinal [22], intracranial [23] (suprasellar/hypothalamic and interhemispheric) and extracranial-extraspinal locations [3][4][5][6][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. The latter are summarized in Table 1.…”

“…Osteolipomas are well-encapsulated and usually have a sharp transition between bone and adipose tissue. However there are 3 reports of osteolipomas with bony attachments [24,30,34]. In these cases, the adipose component was predominant and the mature lamellar bone tissue was irregularly distributed, with a periosteum-like fibrous or fibro-myxoid tissue adherent to one of the surfaces of the bone spicules.…”

Osteolipoma in the ventral meatus of the nasal cavity in a horse: a case report

“…Diese Neoplasie wird in der Humanmedizin als seltene Variante eines Lipoms angesehen. Die knöchernen Anteile werden einerseits als metaplastische Prozesse interpretiert oder aber als sekundä-re Veränderung in Folge mangelnder Perfusion oder Traumatisierung des neoplastischen Gewebes angesehen (Hazariki et al, 2001). Osteolipome sind ebenso wie Lipome gutartig und zeigen weder infiltratives Wachstum noch Metastasenbildung.…”