Oxyphilic granular-cell adenoma of the parotid gland.

Abstract

THIS IS a rare benign tumor of the salivary glands described in the literature under different names: oncocytoma, adenoma, pyknocytoma, oxyphilic adenoma, acidophilic adenoma, oxyphilic cell adenoma, etc. The terminology is still more confused as evidenced in recent publications which consider histologically different tumors of the parotid gland to be identical and use their names interchangeably: papillary cystadenoma lymphomatosum or Warthin's tumor, adenolymphoma, oxyphilic granular-cell tumors and benign lymphoepithelial lesions or Mikulicz's disease, this due to the fact that these lesions contain oncocytes in different amounts. 1 The oxyphilic granular-cell adenoma is a tumor formed by cells called oncocytes, this designation used for the first time by Hamperl 2 who derived it from the Greek word Ογκονζ θαι meaning increase in bulk. He credits Schaffer with first describing these cells as granular swollen cells, and later Zimmerman called them pyknocytes. It is considered that the first such tumor described in