A Giant Oral Lipoma with Possible Post-Traumatic Origin: A Rare Entity at the University Teaching Hospital Center of Yaounde

Abstract

Lipomas are benign tumors of adipose tissue with pathogenesis and a controversial etiology. An explicit link between soft tissue trauma and the occurrence of lipomas is difficult to establish. However, some cases have been described. These soft tissue tumors have been called "post-traumatic lipomas". Clinically oral lipomas appear as yellowish nodular masses less than 3 cm in diameter. Yet the oral lipoma can increase in size from 5 to 11 cm over several years. The reported case is the first referred in our service. It was a mass located on the inside of the left cheek painless, nodular, yellowish about 8 cm in diameter, secondary to trauma. The treatment was surgical under local anesthesia. In the presence of mature fat cells very similar in appearance to the surrounding normal fat associated with a detachment of the superficial layers of the oral epithelium, the suggested diagnosis was a posttraumatic intraoral lipoma.