[Surgical treatment of haemangiomas]

The therapeutic approach to haemangiomas has changed slightly in recent years, moving from a generally conservative attitude to a more aggressive one in some cases. Chronic unaesthetic alterations that might be caused by haemangiomas, psychosocial traumas that can be caused during childhood, together with a better understanding of the behaviour of this type of lesions and advances in safer and more efficient surgical techniques are the basic factors behind this change of attitude. The present paper concentrates on the surgical treatment of haemangiomas, explaining their indications according to the stage of evolution at which they are found, and the surgical techniques employed to resect the lesion with the least morbidity. Similarly, a detailed treatment is given to those lesions that, because of their specific facial anatomical localization, require a special surgical treatment.