Preliminary study of salivary gland mass qualitative diagnosis with contrast-enhanced ultrasound

Abstract

Objective To investigate the qualitative diagnosis of salivary gland mass with contrastenhanced ultrasound(CEUS).Methods The CEUS manifestations in 78 cases with salivary gland mass were observed after intravenous bolus injection with contrast agent SonoVue and confirmed by histology.Results Among 78 salivary gland masses,there were 29 cases with pleomorphic adenomas (37.2％),19with Warthin's tumors (24.4 ％),7 with basal cell adenomas (8.9 ％),and 11 with the other benign masses (14.1％),12 with malignant tumors (15.4％).The intensity of contrast-enhanced masses,whether the enhanced mass margin was clear,whether the peripheral enhancement rim was complete and whether the mass was enlarged were the diagnostic criteria to differentiate the benign and malignant tumors.The accuracy,the sensitivity,specificity,positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 87.2％,95.2％,56.3％,89.4％,75.0％ respectively,and the results also displayed positive likelihood ratio and negative likelihood ratio were 2.178,0.085 respectively.Although they presented with the highest incidence among benign tumors,their CEUS manifestations showed remarkable statistical differences when the pleomorphic adenoma was compared with Warthin' s tumor and basal cell adenoma respectively in enhancement intensity(P ＜0.01) while there were no statistical differences between Warthin's tumors and basal cell adenomas (P ＞0.05).Conclusions CEUS manifestations of salivary gland mass were helpful to the differential diagnosis of various salivary gland tumors. Key words: Ultrasonography; Microbubbles ; Salivary gland neoplasms