Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Nov 16, 2015; 3(11): 951-955
Published online Nov 16, 2015. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i11.951
Laparoscopic splenectomy for a littoral cell angioma of the spleen: Case report
Alice Marzetti, Federico Messina, Daniela Prando, Luca A Verza, Ugo Vacca, Alireza Azabdaftari, Leonardo Rubinato, Domenico Reale, Massimo Favat, Mario Barbujani, Ferdinando Agresta
Alice Marzetti, Federico Messina, Daniela Prando, Luca A Verza, Ugo Vacca, Alireza Azabdaftari, Leonardo Rubinato, Ferdinando Agresta, Department of General Surgery, ULSS 19 del Veneto, 45011 Adria, Italy
Domenico Reale, Department of Histopathology, ULSS 18 del Veneto, 45100 Rovigo, Italy
Massimo Favat, Department of Radiology, ULSS 19 del Veneto, 45011 Adria, Italy
Mario Barbujani, Department of Internal Medicine, ULSS 19 del Veneto, 45011 Adria, Italy
Author contributions: All the authors equally contributed to this work.
Institutional review board statement: According to Italian regulation, ethical committee approval is not requested for case reports analyzing anonymized routinely collected data.
Informed consent statement: The patient gave her informed verbal consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Alice Marzetti, MD, Department of General Surgery, ULSS 19 del Veneto, Piazzale degli Etruschi, 45011 Adria, Italy. alimrz@yahoo.it
Telephone: +39-340-6093921 Fax: +39-532-242954
Received: May 8, 2015
Peer-review started: May 9, 2015
First decision: June 3, 2015
Revised: June 27, 2015
Accepted: August 4, 2015
Article in press: August 7, 2015
Published online: November 16, 2015
Abstract

A littoral cell angioma (LCA) is a primary vascular tumor of the spleen, that can have malignant potential and may present association with other malignancies. This is a case of LCA that was discovered incidentally in a 79-year-old woman who presented with a polycythemia at the time of consultation. The neoplasm was evaluated by ultrasound and computed tomography. The patient underwent a splenectomy that revealed LCA by pathological evaluation. The post-operative outcome was favorable with no complications or recurrent disease. This case presentation, clinical, radiographic, and pathological features of an uncommon splenic tumor can be studied in order to advance our knowledge in our understanding of LCA.

Keywords: Laparoscopy, Splenectomy, Splenomegaly, Angioma, Littoral cell

Core tip: We invite readers to read “laparoscopic splenectomy for littoral cell angioma of the spleen: Case report”, because we understand how pathological evaluation, after splenectomy, allows the definite diagnosis of this rare vascular neoplasm and given its potential malignancy and its association with other cancer types, splenectomy should be always performed.