[Vascular tumors in the aged]

In elderly people, we find other vascular malformations and neoplasms to be frequent and important than during the first decades of life. The features of malformations change in the course of the years due to degenerative processes (e.g., venous lakes in solar degeneration, Pasini's ectasias of the lower lip). True angiomas are relatively rare in old people (except "senile" or tardive angiomas). Most of the malignant vascular tumors do not develop until very late in life (e.g., the sporadic type of Kaposi's sarcoma, Stewart-Treves syndrome, multicentric angiosarcoma of the scalp). Except for these malignancies, there is a greater range of therapeutic means in the elderly, since aged skin is more extensible and late sequelae of X-ray therapy are of minor importance.