Symptomatic Intraoral Submuscular Lipoma Located Nearby Mental Foramen

Abstract

This report describes and discusses the clinical investigations available for the investigation of intraoral fatty tumors of the chin, with a focus on lipomas. Lipomas are relatively uncommon tumors in the oral cavity; only 1% to 4% of cases occur at this site. The presence of lipoma in the head and neck area may raise problems in surgical resection. Treatment of lipoma needs wide excision to reduce recurrence. But there are important structures on mental foramen, especially mental nerve. So careful dissection must be done to avoid nerve injury. Importantly, the development of sarcomatous change within the lipoma cannot be ruled out at imaging and requires a histologic specimen. Because of the histologic similarity between normal adipose tissue and lipoma, accurate clinical and surgical information is very important in making a definitive diagnosis. Thus, a clinician sending a surgical specimen for microscopic analysis must provide the oral pathologist with all available clinical and surgical information. The treatment of oral lipomas, including all the histologic variants, is simple surgical excision. No recurrence is observed. Although the growth of oral lipomas is usually limited, they can reach great dimensions, interfering with speech and mastication and reinforcing the need for excision. In this study, the authors describe the clinical and histopathologic features of symptomatic 2 patients of oral lipomas.