Nodular fasciitis: an analysis of 250 patients.

A clinicopathological analysis was made of data from 250 cases of nodular fasciitis. These benign nodules usually occurred in young and middle-aged adults in the 4th and 5th decades, most often in the forearm (27%) followed by the thigh (17%) and the upper arm (12%), and grew rather rapidly to reach a mean diameter of 1.5 cm, usually with slight tenderness. Lesions in nodular fasciitis could be separated into 3 types based on a range of histological features, modified from those of Price et al.: myxoid, cellular and fibrous. This subgrouping seemed to cover adequately the spectrum of histological appearances observed in nodular fasciitis. It was roughly correlated with the duration of the nodule. The mitotically active myxoid form tended to have the shortest history, the fibrous the longest, while that of the cellular group was of intermediate duration.