Is the Median Palatine Cyst a Distinct Entity?

Abstract

T s h In 1992, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the second, revised edition of “Histological Typing of Odontogenic Tumours,” following the first edition published in 1971. It was the first authoritative and useful guide to the uneasy classification of odontogenic tumors. In this official position of the WHO, we can read the following: “Midline cysts of the maxilla and mandible, previously thought to be entities derived from epithelium entrapped during the fusion of embryonic facial processes. The existence of these cysts as entities derived in this way has been seriously questioned by embryologists and pathologists. It is now felt that those in the maxilla represent a posterior extension of a nasopalatine duct cyst in the case of a median palatine cyst and an anterior extension in the case of a median alveolar cyst. Occasionally, a cyst in the median alveolar position is a keratocyst. Cysts in the midline of the mandible may be radicular cysts, lateral periodontal cysts or odontogenic keratocysts.” Can we now assume that median palatine cysts (MPCs) are not a separate entity? Despite this, 3 cases of median maxillary cyst (or palatal median cyst) were reported in the literature after 1992. In the most recent case, published by Manzon et al in 2009, the authors stated that MPC s an uncommon nonodontogenic cyst, because it