2009 Volume 55 Issue 7 Pages 378-381
We report the case of a salivary duct carcinoma thought to have arisen from a benign tumor of the submandibular gland. The patient was a 72-year-old man. He had a hard, elastic, painless mass measuring 30 ×20mm in the right submandibular region. CT and MRI revealed that the mass spread to the adjacent tissues with a rough margin and ipsilateral cervical lymph node metastases. He underwent excision of the right submandibular gland tumor combined with a radical neck dissection. On histological examination of the surgical specimens, malignant components were observed around hyalinized tissues, which were thought to be remnants of a benign tumor. On the basis of these histological findings, the tumor was diagnosed to be a salivary duct carcinoma, which was highly suspected to have undergone transformation from a benign tumor. The neck specimens had 17 histologically positive nodes, including 12 nodes showing extracapsular spread of tumor. He received postoperative chemoradiotherapy, but local failure with distant metastases developed, and the patient died 10 months after operation.
