A liver hemangioma is a type of noncancerous (benign) growth in your liver. Your doctor might call it a hepatic hemangioma.
The hemangioma, or tumor, is a tangle of blood vessels. It’s the most common noncancerous growth in the liver. It’s rarely serious and doesn’t turn into liver cancer even when you don’t treat it.
Causes
Anyone can get a liver hemangioma, but it most often happens in your 30s, 40s, and 50s. Women are three times more likely to get it than men are. The reason is unclear.
Doctors also don’t know exactly what triggers a hemangioma to form in your liver. But studies suggest that your genes may be involved.
Researchers believe that other things may play a role in making the tumor or helping it get bigger. They include:
- Long-term steroid therapy for a disease or for muscle-building
- Using birth control pills for a long time
- Pregnancy
Symptoms
Hemangiomas can grow in many parts of your body, such as your skin, muscle, bones, and other organs.
You likely won’t have any symptoms of a liver hemangioma unless the mass is bigger than 5 centimeters, which is uncommon. Rare hemangiomas that are larger than 10 centimeters may cause such symptoms as:
- Pain in your upper belly
- Feeling full quicker than usual at meals
- Bloating after eating
- Nausea and vomiting
It’s possible for a liver hemangioma to bleed or to form blood clots that trap fluid. You might feel pain in your belly.
Diagnosis
Doctors usually find liver hemangiomas while checking the organ for something else with an imaging test. They might include:
- Ultrasound
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- Computed tomography (CT) scan
If something looks suspicious in these images, you may need more imaging and blood tests to zero in on a diagnosis.
In addition, your doctor will ask you about details of your medical history, and especially if you’ve had cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) or any type of cancer in your liver or elsewhere.
Treatment
A liver hemangioma usually can be left alone. But your doctor may want to monitor it with imaging testing once or twice a year to see if it grows. That happens in about one in 10 cases. Scientists don’t know why this happens to some growths and not others.
No drugs can treat liver hemangiomas. If the mass gets too big too quickly, or causes pain, you might need surgery to remove it.
Embolization is another option. Your surgeon inserts a thin tube called a catheter through a cut in your skin to block certain blood vessels that feed the hemangioma. This can slow its growth or even shrink it.
It’s very likely that even if you have a liver hemangioma, you won’t find out.