UNASSIGNED: Giant hepatic haemangioma (GHH) is defined as a hepatic haemangioma (HH) of >10 cm in diameter. Its association with thrombocytopenia and consumption coagulopathy is quite rare.
METHODS: Here, we present a case of a 39-year-old man with a rapidly enlarging 25-cm GHH arising from the entire left hemiliver. Laboratory findings suggested pancytopenia but normal liver and renal functions. He was diagnosed with Kasabach-Merritt syndrome (KMS). After three units of aphaeretic platelet transfusion, the patient underwent left hepatectomy. Postoperative recovery was uneventful, and his regular follow-up revealed no recurrence even after two years.
UNASSIGNED: HH predominantly affects females, but males can also be affected, as seen in this case. With observation, it can grow over time, particularly in patients under 50 years of age. Surgical management should be considered when HH causes symptoms or is larger than 10 cm. The evolving understanding of GHH and the critical role of surgery are important, particularly when they complicate haematological or coagulation profiles and lead to thrombocytopenia.
CONCLUSIONS: Our case report highlights the significance of surgical intervention in GHH, and a disease-free outcome can be expected for patients with this condition in the future. To our knowledge, this is the first such case report from Bangladesh.

Not required for Clinical Vignette.

Haemobilia is defined as bleeding from the biliary system due to abnormal communication between a blood vessel and the bile ducts. Melena or hematemesis, abdominal pain and jaundice represent the pathognomonic triad for haemobilia, but clinical presentation and aetiology of this entity are extremely variable. We report a case of a 50-year-old man with melena and anaemia and a clinical history of multivalvular endocarditis in which an extremely rare presence of 2 uncommon causes of haemobilia was found, such as a mycotic pseudoaneurysm and a giant hepatic haemangioma, both treated by transarterial embolization. In the management of haemobilia, TAE has been proven to be the treatment of choice because it combines a diagnostic angiography with therapeutic intervention in a minimally invasive, safe and effective way. Physician and radiologist should keep in mind also the uncommon aetiologies of haemobilia, knowing that the source of bleeding could be more than just one.

Patients with liver cirrhosis are at increased risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and are placed on routine surveillance for HCC. Diagnosis algorithms are in place to guide clinicians in the evaluation of liver lesions detected during surveillance. Radiological assessments are critical with diagnostic criteria based on identification of typical hallmarks of HCCs on multiphasic computed tomography (CT) and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We report a patient with a hypervascular exophytic lesion indeterminate for HCC on CT imaging. While the detection of an exophytic arterially-enhancing lesion in an at-risk patient on CT imaging may prompt clinicians to treat the lesion as HCC without further evaluation, the patient underwent contrast-enhanced MRI with the lesion being eventually diagnosed as an exophytic haemangioma. Thus, no further action was necessary and the patient was continued on routine HCC surveillance.
UNASSIGNED: Radiological surveillance for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is routine in patients at risk of HCC.Diagnosis algorithms that are in place for indeterminate lesions detected during HCC surveillance should be adhered to in order to achieve an accurate diagnosis.Sequential imaging with contrast-enhanced (gadoxetate) MRI should be used to obviate the need for an invasive biopsy when an exophytic lesion indeterminate for HCC is identified during CT imaging in a patient with liver cirrhosis, especially when a hepatic haemangioma remains a differential diagnosis.

Infantile haemangiomas (IHs) are the most common benign tumours of childhood; despite the benign histology, prognosis depends on severity of visceral involvement, with a mortality rate ranging from 50 to 90%. In this paper, we describe two infants with multifocal infantile haemangiomatosis and hepatic involvement. This condition should receive appropriate management as it can be potentially lethal due to the high risk of systemic complications such as cardiac or fulminant hepatic failure and abdominal compartment syndrome. Both cases presented with liver involvement, but only the infant who had an excellent response to propranolol is still alive. A review of current therapeutic approaches is also presented even though there are, at present, no uniform guidelines for treatment, despite the relative frequency of infantile haemangiomatosis and the potential severe complications.

To evaluate the feasibility of using radiomics with precontrast magnetic resonance imaging for classifying hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and hepatic haemangioma (HH).
This study enrolled 369 consecutive patients with 446 lesions (a total of 222 HCCs and 224 HHs). A training set was constituted by randomly selecting 80% of the samples and the remaining samples were used to test. On magnetic resonance (MR) images of HCC and HH obtained with in-phase, out-phase, T2-weighted imaging (T2WI), and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) sequences, we outlined the target lesions and extracted 1029 radiomics features, which were classified as first-, second-, higher-order statistics and shape features. Then, the variance threshold, select k best, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator algorithms were explored for dimensionality reduction of the features. We used four classifiers (decision tree, random forest, K nearest neighbours, and logistic regression) to identify HCC and HH on the basis of radiomics features. Two abdominal radiologists also performed the conventional qualitative analysis for classification of HCC and HH. Diagnostic performances of radiomics and radiologists were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis.
Valuable radiomics features for building a radiomics signature were extracted from in-phase (n = 22), out-phase (n = 24), T2WI (n = 34) and DWI (n = 24) sequences. In comparison, the logistic regression classifier showed better predictive ability by combining four sequences. In the training set, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.86 (sensitivity: 0.76; specificity: 0.78), and in the testing set, the AUC was 0.89 (sensitivity: 0.822; specificity: 0.714). The diagnostic performance for the optimal radiomics-based combined model was significantly higher than that for the less experienced radiologist (2-years experience) (AUC = 0.702, p < 0.05), and had no statistic difference with the experienced radiologist (10-years experience) (AUC = 0.908, p>0.05).
We developed and validated a radiomics signature as an adjunct tool to distinguish HCC and HH by combining in-phase, out-phase, T2W, and DW MR images, which outperformed the less experienced radiologist (2-years experience), and was nearly equal to the experienced radiologist (10-years experience).

BACKGROUND: Transarterial (chemo-)embolization/lipiodolization (TAE/TAL) might be an attractive minimally invasive alternative to surgery in the treatment of symptomatic hepatic haemangioma. This review assesses the efficacy and safety of TAE/TAL as primary treatment for symptomatic hepatic haemangioma.
METHODS: A systematic search of the literature was performed by two reviewers following the PRISMA guidelines. Cohort studies and case reports were identified; outcomes of cohort studies were reported. The primary efficacy outcome was tumour size before and after TAE/TAL. Improvement of symptoms and quality of life (QoL) were secondary outcomes; the primary safety outcome was complications. The Downs and Black statement was used for quality assessment.
RESULTS: Eighteen cohort studies were identified, including 1284 patients. TAE/TAL led to a decrease in tumour size in 1100/1223 (89.9%) patients and to improvement or disappearance of symptoms in 1080/1096 (98.5%) patients. A significant decrease in tumour size from 9.79 ± 0.79 cm to 4.00 ± 1.36 cm (p < 0.001) was shown. Grade 3 complications occurred in 37/1284 (2.9%) patients. Surgical treatment was necessary in 35/1284 (2.7%) of patients.
CONCLUSIONS: TAE/TAL appears to be a promising and safe treatment to decrease tumour size of hepatic haemangioma. The technique might also provide partial relief of symptoms, although no randomized clinical trials or prospective studies using validated QoL questionnaires are available. TAE/TAL may be considered as a viable alternative to resection.

Vascular tumours of the liver represent an underrated chapter of medical and surgical hepatology. These tumours cover a wide spectrum ranging from the frequent and most benign hepatic haemangioma (HH), via the rare and intermediately aggressive hepatic epithelioid haemangioendothelioma (HEHE) to the rare and most malignant hepatic haemangiosarcoma (HHS). In contrast to the treatment algorithms for hepatocellular and cholangiocellular cancer, the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to HEHE and HHS are not well developed. The related uncertainty is explained by their rare occurrence and their protean clinical, morphological (imaging) and histopathological presentation and behaviour. This article gives an update about these particular tumours based on the analysis of the recent literature and of the studies on vascular tumours published by the European Liver Intestine Transplantation Association (ELITA)-European Liver Transplant Registry (ELTR). It focuses also on the place of liver transplantation (LT) in the respective therapeutic algorithms. The differential diagnosis between these vascular and other tumour types may be very difficult. Correct diagnosis is of utmost importance and is based on a high index of clinical suspicion and on the integration of clinical, radiological, histological [including immunohistochemistry (IHC) and molecular biology findings]. Surgery, be it partial or total hepatectomy (LT), should be proposed whenever possible, because it is the therapeutic mainstay. In HEHE, LT provides excellent results, with long-term disease-free survivals (DFS) reaching 75%. Good results can be obtained even in case of (frequent) extrahepatic spread. Based on the extensive ELITA-ELTR study a HEHE-LT prognostic score has been proposed in order to estimate the risk of recurrence after LT. In contrast, results of surgery and LT are extremely poor for HHS, for the almost invariably rapid recurrence (within 6 months) and related death within 2 years. LT remains a contraindication for HHS. Due to the still important recurrence rate after surgical resection (25% in HEHE and almost 100% in HHS), there is an urgent need to develop pharmacological treatments targeting angiogenic and non-VEGF angiogenic pathways. To date, some prospective pilot studies and case reports have shown some short-term stabilisation of the disease in small groups of patients. In order to make progress, combination of surgery, anti-angiogenic and immunotherapy seems worthwhile. To complete the panel of vascular liver tumours, infantile haemangioendothelioma, haemangiopericytoma, nodular regenerative hyperplasia (NRH) and hepatic small vessel neoplasms (HSVN) are also discussed.

The case described in this report is of a two-month-old boy who presented with severe hypothyroidism. The infant also had multiple hepatic haemangiomas. The cause of hypothyroidism was found to be due to consumption of the hormone by the tumour. The patient was put on high dose of thyroxin and medical treatment for the haemangiomas. He was followed for three years, cured from the haemangiomas, was no more suffering from hypothyroidism, and all treatments were stopped. More details about this case and similar other cases have been discussed.

BACKGROUND: Prevalence and incidence of hepatic haemangioma are estimated from autopsy series only. Although benign and generally asymptomatic, hepatic haemangioma can cause serious complications.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of hepatic haemangioma and to attempt to quantify the risk of major complications such as spontaneous rupture.
METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the radiology database of a Regional University Hospital over a 7-year period: the radiological records of 83,181 patients who had an abdominal computed tomography or magnetic resonance scan were reviewed. Diagnoses made at imaging were reviewed and related to clinical course.
RESULTS: Hepatic haemangioma was diagnosed in 2071 patients (2.5% prevalence). In 226 patients (10.9%), haemangioma had diameter of 4 cm or more (giant haemangioma). The risk of bleeding was assessed on patients without concomitant malignancies. Spontaneous bleeding occurred in 5/1067 patients (0.47%). All 5 patients had giant haemangioma: 4 had exophytic lesions and presented with haemoperitoneum; 1 with centrally located tumour experienced intrahepatic bleeding.
CONCLUSIONS: Giant haemangiomas have a low but relevant risk of rupture (3.2% in this series), particularly when peripherally located and exophytic. Surgery might be considered in these cases.