The International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies (ISSVA) was born in 1992 after 16 years of biennial international workshops. Interdisciplinary and international collaboration has been the guiding principle of the ISSVA, with a primary goal of improving our understanding and management of these lesions. This continuing workshop has taken place every two years in various countries around the world.

Multiple nomenclatures for “angiomas” or “vascular birthmarks” have long been an important obstacle to communication amongst the various medical specialists (pediatricians, dermatologists, surgeons, radiologists, angiologists, ophthalmologists, ENT surgeons, pathologists, etc.) involved in the management of these patients (13).

During discussions among members of the workshop it was decided to discard the old terms “angioma” and “birthmark.” A very basic classification system was adopted by the ISSVA during its 1996 workshop, to give us a common language.

We now distinguish two main types of vascular anomalies: vascular tumors (the most common type is infantile hemangioma, but other rare vascular tumors occur in children as well as in adults) and vascular malformations (10).

This system is based on the founding biological investigation of Mulliken and Glowacki published in 1982, which provided the groundwork for a proper identification of vascular birthmarks (16). Vascular tumors have been differentiated from vascular malformations based on their clinical appearance, radiological and pathological features (21), and biological behavior.