Strawberry birthmark

A strawberry birthmark is a benign growth of small blood vessels in a baby. Its medical name is infantile haemangioma. Most are harmless, but some need treatment very early because they grow quickly or may damage vision, breathing, feeding or the skin.

• A strawberry birthmark is often invisible or barely visible at birth and grows mainly in the first one to three months of life.
• Most haemangiomas have largely finished growing by around five months. They then shrink slowly over several years.
• Small marks in a safe location can usually be monitored with photographs and check-ups.
• A mark near the eye, nose, lip, ear, neck or airway, in the nappy area, a large segmental mark or an open wound carries a higher risk.
• Do not wait for months if a haemangioma may be high risk. Specialist assessment should ideally be arranged in the first few weeks of life.
• Oral propranolol is the standard treatment when treatment that acts throughout the body is needed. Thin, superficial marks can sometimes be treated with timolol.
• More than five skin haemangiomas may be a reason to check for haemangiomas in the liver.
• A haemangioma is not cancer and is not caused by anything the parents did wrong during pregnancy.