Lipoma Diagnosis

[Cooldude]

Hi Matt and all,
I have a small 1.5cm *1 cm firm lump in my left gluteal (hip) region for about 2 years. It is quite painful when it gets pressed while seating on any hard surface, otherwise it is painless. I had an MRI scan and ultrasound on this region. Ultrasound indicates 'probably a small lipoma' while MRI does not show any Lipoma.

Question - Which is the authentic scan for Lipoma. I heard MRI is more accurate. How come Ultrasound detected Lipoma and MRI did not? Please comment.

[matt]

Hi Cooldude! Sorry I missed your post since it was in the Unrelated to Lipomas forum.

Ultrasound results are quite poor when it comes to lipomas since they are mostly matured fat cells. You can barely detect the borders of the lipoma if it's solid and encasulated and if you have an experienced eye.

From what I know you are right that MRI should be more accurate way to detect lipomas. It escapes me why the MRI didn't detect anything? But according to your description it sounds very much like a lipoma to me.

[Klaus]

Hi Cooldude,
I/m very surprised what you are writing here. I think that from all of us , I have the most experiences with both MRI and ultrasound, because I had so many of them. It is true, that MRI will give you more accurate details, because, each step it is doing, you get single pictures, which is not possible with ultrasound. But, an ultrasound will find a lipoma if there is a lipoma. Sometimes it depends how experience the person is, which is handling the machine.

[ingey68]

kind of odd but i only had ultrasound when my chest wall lipomas were diagnosed. Mri was never even suggested. Turns out they found 2 of them in the general area