The Natural History of the Strawberry Nevus

Abstract

The termstrawberry nevusis used here to describe a common cutaneous angioma of infancy. Such lesions are composed of dilated capillaries and larger blood vessels, sometimes with large blood-filled spaces which have justified the termcavernous hemangioma. They are distinguished clinically from port-wine stains by their bulk and compressibility; the latter are flat in infancy and childhood, though they may thicken in later years. Clinical differentiation from the cirsoid angioma and other rare angiomatous lesions is usually straightforward. The strawberry nevus may be present at birth, or may appear at any time in the next few months. In either event, it may grow rapidly for a time, in both area and bulk; and, because it is sometimes quite flat at its onset, it may at first be mistaken for a port-wine stain or even a large spider telangiectasis. In 1938, W. A. Lister's1classical paper showed statistically that