Adeno cystic carcinoma of salivary glands

Abstract

Background: adenoid cystic carcinoma is the most frequent malignant tumor of submaxillary and minor salivary glands. Despite its slow growth, it shows an unfavorable prognosis because of its distant dissemination.Objective: to analyse our series of patients in relation to the literature.Materials and methods: 44 patients with mean age 52.47 years female gender. Of them, 61.3% were of minor salivary glands, 20.4% of submaxillary gland, and 18.2% the parotid gland. All patients underwent complete resection of the tumor followed by neck dissection in 34%. Co60 radiotherapy was administered to 43.2%. Mean follow up was 52.5 (range, 1-120) months.Results: 5-year recurrence rate was 36.8%. At 5 and 10 years, overall survival was 60 and 36%,respectively. Close surgical margins, requirement of adjuvant radiotherapy and stage significantly affected survival rate. The multivariate analysis showed that close margins was statistically significant for survival and associated with an unfavorable tendency for disease-free interval.Conclusions: extention of surgery to the neck and adyuvant radiotherapy was dependent of stage, clear surgical margins, neural invasion, positive nodes in the neck and hystological subtype.