Adult hemangioma of the pancreas: difficult diagnosis of a rare disease

Adult pancreatic hemangiomas are rare. We report a new case and review the literature. Pancreatic hemangiomas do not produce specific symptoms, so diagnosis is not easy. Computed tomography is often misleading, since pancreatic hemangiomas behave differently from liver hemangiomas, which are more frequently seen. Instead of showing arterial peripheral nodular enhancement followed by centripetal filling they take up the contrast material more slowly and the filling is usually inhomogeneous, which may give the impression of a cystic tumor. The reason for this may be that the microscopic structure of the pancreatic hemangioma is different from that of the liver. It partly consists of thin-walled sinusoids which do not communicate with the circulation of the patient. Since no malignant cases have been published to date, surgical resection might be avoided if the diagnosis can be firmly established.