A lipoma is a lump of fatty tissue between your skin and the underlying muscle. This gives a rubbery feeling that you may be able to move it around a bit. A lipoma is usually painless, harmless, and not cancerous. However, in rare cases, a lipoma can become a liposarcoma, a fat-cell cancer.
Lipomas tend to grow slowly over months or even years. Lipoma may become as large as 8 inches, however it is rare because most stay smaller than 2 inches.
A lipoma can grow anywhere on the body, but it most often occurs under the skin of the upper back, shoulders, arms, armpits, buttocks and upper thighs. It may also develop in a muscle, an organ, or deep within a thigh, shoulder, or calf.
Medical experts believed that Lipomas are caused by:
- Physical Trauma. Some experts believe that lipoma is result to a physical trauma. However, it’s possible it was there previously and discovered because of the trauma.
- Genetic Factors. Some genetic conditions can cause a person to have one or more lipomas, including:
- Gardner syndrome, a condition that causes benign tumors to form.
- Adiposis dolorosa, a condition marked by the growth of lipomas.
- Familial multiple lipomatosis, a hereditary condition that causes multiple lipomas to form.
- Madelung disease, a rare condition marked by lipomas forming around the upper body.
- Cowden syndrome, which is characterized by benign tumors, skin tags, and large head size.
