Lipoma of the esophagus--report of a case and review of the literature.

We report herein, a rare case of esophageal lipoma and review the Japanese literature on this subject. Lipoma of the alimentary tract is relatively uncommon but that of the esophagus is extremely rare with only 17 cases having been reported in Japan. The majority of these cases occurred in the cervical esophagus with the most serious symptom being regurgitation of the pedunculated tumor which lead to asphyxia and death in one case. Only 2 cases occurred in the thoracic esophagus and these tumors were small in size and resected endoscopically. This is the first reported case of an esophageal lipoma being located in the thoracic esophagus which was resected through a thorocotomy. The clinical features of esophageal lipoma are also described herein.