Abstract
Surgery plays and decisive role in the treatment of salivary glands tumor lesions. In retrospective analysis of 123 surgically treated patients we investigated, in addition to basic demographic categories, the occurrence of postoperative complications: facial nerve paralysis, salivary fistula, the Frey syndrome and tumor relapse.
The comparison of postoperative results with cytological findings made it possible to evaluate validity of fine needle biopsy in preoperative diagnostics. The tumor lesions in the parotid gland occurred in 87 patients (70.7%), in the submandibular gland in 35 patients (28.5%) and once in the sublingual gland.
The mean age of the patients operated on was 52.2 years, and there were 56 men (45.5 %) in the cohort. Malignant tumor was determined in 17 patients (13.8%) and benign one in 106 patients (86.2%).
Pleiomorphic adenoma was the most frequent tumor found in 34 cases (27.6%). The conservative superficial parotidectomy was performed in 58 cases (47.2%).
Two patients suffered from permanent postoperative paresis of facial nerve, three patients had tumor relapse and four patients experienced the Frey syndrome. The correlation of histopathology results with cytology findings revealed 85.3% sensitivity of aspiration cytology, 100% specificity and 90.1% diagnostic precision.
If the tumor is localized in parotid gland parenchyma outside the presumed course of facial nerve and the size is < 20 mm, a simple extirpation is acceptable.