Salivary duct carcinoma (SDC) is a high-grade aggressive malignancy originating from the salivary gland, which was first described by Kleinsasser et al. in 1968. We reported here three cases of salivary duct carcinoma in the parotid gland.
The first patient was a 66-year-old male, who presented with a mass in the left parotid region. The patient underwent superficial parotidectomy followed by radiotherapy. The second patient was an 85-year-old female, who presented with parapharyngeal extension. She underwent total parotidectomy with mandibulotomy and upper neck dissection. The third patient was a 76-year-old male. He underwent total parotidectomy with resection of the facial nerve and neck dissection. After surgery, he was treated with radiotherapy.
These three patients were not diagnosed as having SDC before surgery and are currently alive without recurrence or metastasis despite differences in treatment. When we analyzed 61 patients in the Japanese literature, patients with SDC showed an extremely poor prognosis. Moreover, the English literature also showed a poor prognosis and predictive factors included sex, tumor size and neck lymph node metastasis. Therefore, radical surgery with neck dissection and radiotherapy followed by complete follow-up is important to treat patients with SDC.
