Intraoral lipomas: A clinicopathological study of 43 cases, including four cases of spindle cell/pleomorphic subtype

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to describe the clinicopathological characteristics of 43 intraoral lipomas and classify them according to their microscopic variants. MATERIAL AND METHODS: All the cases of intraoral lipomas diagnosed at an Oral Pathology service were selected for the study. Clinical data, such as age, gender, location, time of evolution, clinical presentation, clinical hypothesis of diagnosis, and treatment, were collected from the clinical files. RESULTS: Of the 43 cases analyzed, 24 (55.8%) occurred in women. The mean age was 77.4 years. The most affected site was the buccal mucosa (22 cases, 51.1%). The mean lesion size was 1.7 cm. Twenty-three cases (53.5%) were classified as simple lipoma, 14 (32.6%) as fibrolipoma, four (9.3%) as spindle cell/pleomorphic lipoma (SC/PL), one (2.3%) as lipoma of the salivary glands, and one (2.3%) as intramuscular lipoma. In one case of SC/PLs, lipoblasts were observed. No atypical lipoblasts or mitoses were noted. Lipoma was considered more often than other tumor histological subtypes among the clinical hypotheses of diagnosis when the final diagnosis was simple lipoma (p=0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Intraoral lipomas present different clinical presentation depending on the histological subtype. In SC/PLs, lipoblasts with vacuolated cytoplasm may be found and the presence of mature adipocytes is essential for diagnosis. Key words:Lipoma, mouth, spindle cell lipoma, pleomorphic lipoma.