Glomus Jugulare Tumors: I. Historical Background

Abstract

ON APRIL 18, 1942, at The Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York city, I operated upon a patient with a bleeding mass which arose in the middle ear and protruded from his left ear canal. The excised tumor tissue was identical in every characteristic with proven benign carotid body tumors^1,2removed from the typical site in the neck. The presence of a carotid body-like tumor in the middle ear and mastoid bone without any clinically demonstrable tumor in the neck had never hitherto been described, hence my reluctance to report such a finding. When I found Dr. Stacy Guild's³brief communication in the Anatomical Record, describing "A Hitherto Unrecognized Structure, The Glomus Jugulare In Man," I felt that one could postulate that the tumor I had removed could have developed from the glomus jugulare structure described by Guild. It was three years later, in 1945, when my original