Congenital Giant HairyNevi

Congenital giant nevi, as the name suggests, are when a newborn baby is born with a dark-coloured mole that can be considered very large relative to its body. Although there is a great deal of information in academic articles about the frequency of this condition, when a family has a baby born with such a lesion, these statistics no longer matter. All the family wants is for this mole to be removed somehow and as soon as possible.

Since the lesion, whose removal the family requests primarily out of aesthetic concerns, also carries a 2-4% risk of turning into malignant cancer over the person's lifetime, these lesions also need to be removed for medical reasons. Especially if, during follow-up, there is a change in colour, an open wound forms on it, there is a change in shape or budding occurs, the removal of the lesion should be carried out more urgently, and if it cannot be removed completely, a sample biopsy should be taken and the change evaluated by microscopic examination.

The most important problem in removing moles is closing the skin deficit that forms after the lesion is surgically removed. In small lesions the resulting gap can be closed by taking advantage of the elasticity of the skin, while in somewhat larger ones the problem can be solved by sliding the surrounding tissues. However, the skin deficit that forms during the removal of giant nevi is far greater than what can be closed with these methods. For this reason, giant nevi need to be removed piece by piece in different sessions, or the resulting skin deficit needs to be closed with a skin transplant taken from another part of the body (by the grafting method). In rare cases in which congenital giant nevi are very large and wrap the body like a swimsuit, the amount of healthy skin that can be taken as a graft is very small and the need for skin grafts is greater. In this group of patients, it becomes necessary to place empty silicone balloons under the healthy skin and inflate them slowly over time to expand the existing healthy skin.

Although, with the more widespread use of stem cell technology in the near future, it may become possible to produce skin for patients with skin deficits, artificial skin applications, which are still experimental, are not yet a technique that can be used routinely in this group of patients.