Case Report

Spontaneous and enormous, chronic expanding hematoma of the lumbar region: a case report

Dritan Pasku¹ , Artan Bano¹ , Eleni Lagoudaki² , Kalliopi Alpantaki¹ and Pavlos Katonis¹

¹  Department of Orthopaedic and Traumatology, University Hospital of Heraklion, 71110, Crete, Greece

²  Department of Pathology, Medical School, University of Crete, Heraklion, 71003, Greece

author email corresponding author email

Cases Journal 2009, 2:9400doi:10.1186/1757-1626-2-9400

Published:	24 December 2009

Abstract

Background

Chronic expanding haematoma (CEH) is a very infrequent event with imprecise developmental mechanism and is rarely reported in literature.

Case Presentation

We present a case of enormous and spontaneous chronic haematoma of the back, expanded from the lower thoracic area to the sacral area, in a young patient without any history of trauma or chronic coagulopathy.

Conclusion

The MRI scan is very useful in preoperative diagnosis, however only the histopathological examination is able to perform the differential diagnosis with soft tissue tumors. Careful surgical treatment is important to minimize the haematoma recurrence.