Vascular nevi in children

Background: Vascular nevi are cutaneous anomalies of angiogenesis and vasculogenesis resulting in various different clinical presentations.
Aim: The purpose of our descriptive study was to observe the various types of vascular nevi in children and their features.
Methods: A total of 4256 pediatric cases attending the dermatology OPD during the study period from August 2002 to August 2004 were screened for vascular nevi.
Results: Out of these, 19 children (0.44%) had vascular nevi-17 hemangiomas of infancy (HOIs) and 2 port-wine stains. The mean age of the affected children was 1.3 years (ranging from 2.5 months to 8 years). There were 13 girls and 6 boys. Seventeen (89.5%) patients had progressing lesions and two (10.5%) had non-involuting ones. A solitary lesion was seen in ten (52.6%) cases and two to five lesions were present in five (26.3%) cases. The nevi were distributed over multiple sites in seven (36.8%) cases, the head and neck in six (31.6%) cases, the chest and lower limb in two (10.5%) cases each, and the upper limbs and genitalia in one (5.3%) case each. Among the hemangiomas of infancy, 15 (88.2%) cases of superficial type and 2 (11.8%) cases of deep type were seen. The cutaneous complications included ulceration in four cases and infection in one.
Conclusions: HOIs were the most common vascular nevi of childhood.