Post-traumatic pseudolipomas – a review and postulated mechanisms of their development

SummaryPost-traumatic pseudolipomas develop in areas of the body that have been subjected to acute, severe, blunt trauma and chronic trauma. This study aimed to review the literature for reports of post-traumatic pseudolipomas on Medline and identify the possible mechanisms of their development. In the literature, 124 such cases were identified relating to case reports and case series; of these, 98 occurred in females and 26 in males. The majority of the cases occurred secondary to severe, acute, blunt trauma. The initial postulated mechanisms for development of post-traumatic pseudolipomas were anatomically and mechanically based. Recently, it was shown that there is a close relationship between inflammation and adipogenesis. Blunt trauma results in an inflammatory process. We postulate that post-traumatic pseudolipoma development occurs as a result of inflammatory triggers and an optimal local milieu at the site of development by making an analogy to an in vivo murine tissue engineering model for neo-adipogenesis.