ABSTRACT
It is vitally important to identify vascular lesions correctly because they have very different clinical behaviours, particularly in their response to surgery. In addition, using consistent and correct nomenclature is vital for meaningful discussion: too often, due to inadequate appreciation of the differences, the terms ‘haemangioma’, ‘vascular malformation’ and ‘vascular anomalies’ are all used interchangeably, leading to confusion when discussing cases, particularly between specialties, and difficulty in comparing studies objectively.
