Poss VM or Lymphangioma - any relation to trauma??

[mom2three]

Hi. I'm new here.

My 8mo son was born by planned c/s and they used a vacuum to pull him out. According to the doctor, the vac came off 4 times. He was born unresponsive and had to be revived. He had immediate swelling that was attributed to the vacuum use by the doctors and nurses. I was told it would go away in 3-4wks.

Well, it never did. It went down some but never completely away. This is on the left side of his head/face. His brow is starting to sag some and is starting to cover his pupil. He had a head u/s at the hospital and 2 CTs. The diagnosis has always been subgaleal hematoma. Then he had an MRI and they said "possible lymphangioma or hemangioma with bony involvement".

We just saw a dermatologist last week and she found a hemangioma on his back (very small) and took a biopsy hoping it might clue us in to what was going on with his head. That bx showed 2 things - port wine stain and something akin to vascular malformation. She is ordering a new MRI with MRV & MRA (veins and arteries). Then when we have that, we will go to this Pediatric Vascular Anomalies clinic where he'll be seen by the derm, an interventional radiologist and a plastic surgeon (as well as his neurosurgeon we had started out seeing for this).

I am struggling to understand these dx. How did we go from subgaleal hematoma to hemangioma/lymphangioma to port wine stain & vascular malformation?!

And, what is the correlation to the vacuum use? How could the vacuum have caused these? Or is it just a very odd coincidence? It just seems like I can't tie it all together and make sense of it.

Any thoughts or advice? FWIW, we are going to a VERY highly rated children's hospital (and, yes, it's all out of network) so I think we have great docs but I'm just not understanding how we got here.

Thank you for reading this far!

[missy]

I have no advice at all.

I just wanted to know if you have asked an expert?

http://birthmark.org/experts.php

Also, I can copy and paste your post and send it to our founder... she would know exactly who can answer your questions.

Missy

[mom2three]

Missy - No, I haven't used the Ask An Expert yet. I was just looking at that but wasn't sure who best to send it to.

If the founder has any advice, I'd love it. I'm looking for any and all input at this point. Thank you!!!

[missy]

Well, write to Linda... she'll know who can answer your question.

http://birthmark.org/expert/ask_the_founder.php

She will pass it on to the appropiate physician!

Missy