Tumour of the Palm having the Structure of a Mixed Tumour of the Salivary Glands

Abstract

The neoplasms most frequently arising in the glands adjacent to the mucosa of the face and neck have been designated as mixed tumours because of the complex epithelial and connective tissues of which they are composed. Tumours of this type are usually located in one of the large salivary glands, notably the parotid. They occcur, also, in the small accessory salivary glands of the mouth, in the nasal fossae, the pharynx and nasopharynx, on the skin of the face, on the scalp, in the lacrimal glands and the tracheobronchial mucosa. Only a few such tumours located elsewhere than in the cephalic region have been recorded. Kreibig has reported two cases in which growths having the structure of these salivary gland tumours were found elsewhere than in the head and neck. His first patient was a man thirty-eight years of age who, six years previous to hospital admission, had received a severe trauma to the anterior part of the tibia between the median and the lower third. At the point of injury there appeared a hard nodule, which was well encapsulated and increased progressively in size. At the time of examination it was as large as a hen's egg. In Kreibig's second case, that of a man thirty years of age, the tumour, the size of a hazelnut, had appeared three years previously on the proximal part of the forearm. In both instances the diagnosis was mixed tumour. Tessman, quoted by Kreibig, described a tumour which he called a chondro-endothelio-myxoma, which would appear to be a mixed tumour. It had grown for four years on the back of the hand of a middle-aged woman. Hirsch has reported a mixed tumour in a negress, thirty-eight years of age. The tumour, as large as an apple, arose in the connective tissue of the thigh, above the patella.