Intramuscular hemangioma: recurrence risk related to surgical margins

The best treatment for intramuscular hemangiomas is unclear in part because the outcome is variable, with recurrence rates ranging from 18% to 61%. This variance is due to deficiencies in previous reports such as an inadequate population size, lack of life table analyses, lack of uniform pathologic criteria, and loose or absent definition of surgical margins. Our goal was to address these deficiencies and support or refute previous results. We identified 110 patients between 1981 and 2005. There were 48 males and 62 females with an average age of 22 years at the time of consult. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed 76% of patients managed initially without excision were surgery-free at 2 years and 66% at 5 years. For patients treated with surgery, 86% and 73% were recurrence free at 2 and 5 years, respectively. There were substantial differences in local recurrence when stratified by margin: 93% of patients were recurrence free at 5 years when the excision was marginal and wide, 65% when intralesional without any gross remaining tumor, and 33% when intralesional with gross remaining tumor. Surgical margins and tumor size were the only identified risk factors for recurrence.