How harmful is hamartoma

How harmful is a hamartoma? A hamartoma is a tumor-like deformity formed by abnormal development of normal tissue. Many scholars believe that this type of tumor is not a true tumor. The disease develops slowly and rarely becomes malignant. However, this does not mean that the harm of the disease is not serious. Let's take a look at how harmful a hamartoma is.

1. Pulmonary hamartoma : patients may experience symptoms such as cough, sputum, hemoptysis, shortness of breath, chest pain, fever, etc. Hamartomas in the main bronchi, lobar bronchi, and especially in the ridge area, present with symptoms earlier, often accompanied by wheezing, and may even cause severe dyspnea and cyanosis.

2. Renal Hamartoma : Some relatively large hamartomas may cause digestive discomfort due to compression of the duodenum, stomach and other organs. When a relatively large hamartoma suddenly ruptures, the patient may experience symptoms such as waist and abdominal pain and hematuria. Patients with severe hemorrhage may feel a mass in the abdomen and may even experience shock symptoms.

3. Peutz-Jeghers syndrome : This disease is a gastrointestinal polyposis disease with mucosal and skin pigmentation. It may be inherited through a single dominant pleiotropic gene. The penetrance is very high, and many people in the same family suffer from the disease (50% of the children of patients develop the disease), and the disease often develops before the age of 10. Polyps are most common in the small intestine, which can cause bleeding and intussusception, as well as abdominal pain, diarrhea, and protein-losing enteropathy.

The nature of polyps is hamartoma. In recent years, studies have found that the rate of canceration of intestinal polyps in patients is 2%. The age of these cancerous patients is often <35 years old, which is more than 10 years earlier than the age of colorectal cancer. Because hamartomas often coexist with adenomas or hamartomas contain adenomatous components, it is not certain whether the canceration comes from the hamartoma itself or the adenoma. The incidence of extraintestinal malignancies can be as high as 10% to 30%.

Pigmentation is common on the lips and their surroundings, cheeks, face, fingers, and occasionally on the intestinal mucosa, but there are also cases where pigmentation is limited to the trunk and limbs. The pigment can be black, brown, gray, blue, etc. A very small number of patients only have intestinal polyps without pigmentation. Because the disease is extensive, symptomatic treatment is generally given, and surgical treatment is only considered when there are serious complications such as uncontrolled bleeding or obstruction.