Conservative treatment of Head and Neck hemangiomas using Intralesional Bleomycin.

Abstract

Background:

Hemangiomas are vascular tumours and commonly occur in head and neck region. Complete treatment of these vascular swellings are often challenging. As surgical excision carries high risk of complications and poor cosmetic outcome, treatment is shifted more towards non-surgical modalities like steroid therapy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and sclerotherapy.

Objective:

To study the efficacy of intralesional Bleomycin sclerotherapy for head and neck hemangiomas.

Method:

Seventeen patients ( 9 males and 8 females) with head and neck hemangiomas were treated with sclerotherapy using intralesional bleomycin injection ( 0.1-0.5 mg/kg/ dose) in a medical college of India. Details of the patients were recorded along with serial photographs of lesion. Post injection outcomes in form of reduction of lesion size, patient satisfaction and complications were also recorded.

Results:

11 patients were completely cured, 3 had more than 50% reduction in size, one patient showed minimal reduction and two had no response. One patient had superficial ulceration, one case of slough and fever was reported. None of the patients developed severe toxic side effects and pulmonary fibrosis with follow up of 18 months.

Conclusions:

Bleomycin injection is safe, easy and well tolerated method for treatment of head and neck hemangiomas. We recommend surgery only if there is no response to other conservative treatment modalities.

• Authors: Ekta Narang, Neha Jain, Jaswinder Kaur, Suparna Roy, Jyoti Singh
• Journal: Indian journal of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery : official publication of the Association of Otolaryngologists of India (Indian J Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg) Vol. 75 Issue 2 Pg. 236-240 (Jun 2023) ISSN: 2231-3796 [Print] India
• PMID: 37275108 (Publication Type: Journal Article)
• Copyright: © Association of Otolaryngologists of India 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.