English

Abstract

BACKGROUND Salivary gland lesions constitute less than 1 % of tumours and about 4 % of all epithelial neoplasms of head and neck region. These comprise of a wide variety of benign, malignant and non-neoplastic lesions which exhibits a difference in histological behaviour. There are no reliable criteria to differentiate on clinical grounds the benign from malignant ones. So morphological evaluation is necessary. We aim to study the frequency of various salivary gland lesions in sialoadenectomy specimens and categorise them into neoplastic and nonneoplastic lesions. METHODS It is a record based retrospective 5-year study carried out in the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, from January 2014 to December 2018. RESULTS In this study a total of 329 histopathologically proven cases of salivary gland lesions were included. Neoplastic lesions and non-neoplastic lesions constituted 78.42 % and 21.58 % respectively. Pleomorphic adenoma was the most common neoplasm (50.54 %) trailed by Warthin’s tumour (9.73 %). Most common malignant neoplasm encountered in our study was mucoepidermoid carcinoma (9.73 %) among which low grade tumours showed predominance. We observed significantly higher incidence of benign and malignant lesions in the 5 th to 6th decade while non neoplastic lesions were seen more in the 4th to 5th decade. Average age of the patients with salivary gland tumours was 46.12  SD 15.57. Majority of cases of salivary gland lesions in our study were from parotid gland (75.68 %) followed by submandibular gland 24.01 %. CONCLUSIONS Pleomorphic adenoma was the most common benign tumour in our study and mucoepidermoid carcinoma the most common malignant tumour. Neoplastic lesions showed a predominance over non neoplastic lesions. Histopathological examination is the mainstay for diagnosis and clinical management. KEYWORDS Histopathology, Pleomorphic Adenoma, Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma