Infrequent Pediatric Subungual Injury Diagnosed by Intraoperative Anatomopathological Material: A Case Report

Abstract

Subungual lesions are very common in clinical practice. We present the clinical case of a 10-year-old female patient who presented with progressive nail deformity. The onset of the condition was approximately five years prior to presentation with an injury in the left hallux, according to the mother. She denied pain or change in the color of the area from the onset of the injury to the day of consultation. There was no previous trauma. Examination revealed subungual bone injury to the distal extremity (distal phalanx of the left hallux), and imaging tests (X-ray and soft tissue ultrasound) found bone injury. Subungual exostosis was considered as a possible diagnosis, thus prompting the indication for exeresis of the tumoral process. After surgical removal, the resected specimen was sent for pathological assessment, which found that an intraosseous hemangiolymphangioma was the origin of the tumor. A subungual exostosis is a slow-growth benign osseous tumor mainly located in the distal phalanx of the hallux that especially affects young adults, being less frequent in children. This condition results from a process of bone neoformation involving different stages, the clinical symptoms of which depend on its size and associated processes. Hemangiolymphangiomas are angiomatous lesions of the blood and lymphatic vessels that have a controversial etiology and present slow, painless, and progressive growth; these lesions are mostly benign. It is worth emphasizing that subungual injuries are not always caused by an underlying bone; therefore, potential differential diagnoses, both benign and malignant, should be considered, based on the location of the injury.