Pattern of presentation and management of orofacial and neck soft tissue tumors in a Nigerian tertiary health center a preliminary study

© 2013 Akinbami et al. licensee Herbert Publications Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). This permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction The overlying soft tissues of the head and neck comprise mainly of subcutaneous fat, neurovascular tissues, fascia and muscles covered by skin and lined by mucosa. Parenchyma organs, glands, glia and lymphoreticular tissues are not classified as soft tissues [1]. Tumors arise from any part of the soft tissues and spread to involve the mucodermal tissues to different extent. Rate of growth and extent of involvement depend on the nature of the lesion. The categories of lesions of soft tissues include hamartomas, benign and malignant tumours [2]. The treatment and outcome of these lesions are determined by the extent of spread/stage of the disease [3]. When lesion is confined within the subcutaneous plane, there might be no need to utilize flaps for repair especially when collapse will not be appreciable, however when significant mucodermal tissue is lost, aesthetics becomes a challenge to overcome. Our department is a relatively new center with a low turn up of these cases and there has been scanty report of these lesions from other parts of the country. The aim of this study was therefore to document the pattern of presentation and management of orofacial and neck soft tissue tumors seen in our center in the last 6 years.