EFFICACY OF EMBOLIZATION IN THE TREATMENT OF NASAL HEMANGIOMAS

Abstract

Although hemangiomas are benign tumors which need surgical treatment, some form of preoperative treatment is often required since a good visual field is difficult to achieve in the case of hemangiomas in the nasal cavity or paranasal sinuses. Super-selective embolization is widely accepted as the treatment of choice to control hemorrhage during vascular tumor surgery. The subjects of the present study comprised two patients with nasal hemangiomas which underwent embolization prior to surgery and the usefulness of embolization is discussed with a review of previous reports.
Case 1 was a 55-year-old male and case 2 was a 54-year-old male. They were both admitted to our hospital complaining of epistaxis, and in both cases ENT examination showed a hemorrhagic tumor in the nasal cavity. Enhanced-computed tomography (CT) indicated the presence of a nasal mass lesion which had a rich blood circulation. The finding indicated the necessity of super-selective embolization prior to surgery in order to minimize bleeding. Super-selective embolization was performed with a microcoil, which was introduced into the distal branch of the sphenopalatine artery. The tumors decreased in size after super-selective embolization of the feeding artery. After embolization, the tumors were resected with endoscopic sinus surgery without any remarkable bleeding. The two cases reported herein reconfirmed the usefulness and effectiveness of preoperative embolization in the treatment of nasal hemangiomas.