Diagnosing A Swelling
June 23, 2009
A swelling may originate from the skin, muscle, vessel, nerve or even bone and the cause for the swelling may be congenital, inflammatory, traumatic, cancerous or otherwise. It is important to diagnose a swelling so as to rule out the possible effects and to decide upon the line of alternative treatment.
Congenital swellings are the one’s that usually appear since birth, including meningocele, haemangioma etc. Sometimes congenital swellings may appear later in the life, including dermoid cyst, brachial cyst etc.
Acute inflammatory swellings are the one’s that present with redness, pain, heat and some impairment in the function along with the swelling. These may mimic a growing sarcoma, in which the pain appears much before the swelling. Other features of acute inflammatory swelling include oedema, tenderness and induration. Presence of fluctuation of the swelling, slight rise in the temperature and rise in WBC count confirm the inflammation.
Chronic inflammatory swellings show same signs but in a mild manner. Swelling is much more as compared to pain and other features. This type of swelling is differentiated from a cancerous swelling by the presence of occasional diminution of size. A tumourous swelling always increases in size and never recedes.
Traumatic swellings develop following a trauma such as fracture, rupture of a muscle etc.
Benign cancerous swellings grow slowly and move freely such as fibroadenoma of breast. Malignant tumours grow rapidly and metastasize to lymph nodes or other organs. Pain is often not seen in malignant swellings. Malignant transformation of a benign growth is common at later stage.
One must always keep in mind some important points to know the transformation. Sudden increase in the size of the swelling, increase in the temperature of the swelling, fixity of the growth, appearance of pain, bleeding, ulceration or secondary changes in the swelling point towards the malignant transformation and require immediate medical attention.
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