Verruciform xanthoma

Case report and a clinicopathologic review of our 4 cases and 151 references

Abstract

Verruciform xanthoma, first described as a lesional entity by Shafer in 1971, is a verrucous lesion in appearance, which occurres often in oral cavity. Histopathologically the lesion shows moderate to severe parakeratin plugging and the presence of swollen “foam” cells in the connective tissue papillae between elongated epithelial rete pegs.
One hundred fifty five cases of this lesion, including 4 of our own, that appear in the literature were clinicopathologically reviewed in this paper.
The age of the patients ranged from 14 to 89 (mean age 50.5) years old and there was no sex predilection for occurrence. The lesion was most frequently found on the alveolar gingiva (55.5%), followed by the palate (20.0%), tongue (12.3%), buccal mucosa (4.5%) and so on. It is still fully unknown whether this lesional condition is a true neoplasm or chronic inflammatory tissue reaction, while most researchers would agree to the latter, and our cases might support the latter hypothesis.
Simple surgical excision is recommended as the first choice in treatment because no recurrences have been reported except one case reported by Nowparast et al.