Abstract
Acinic cell carcinoma is a rare epithelial malignant tumor of the salivary gland categorized as a low-grade tumor. It commonly affects people in their 30s to 40s without sexual predominance. It is most commonly found in the parotid gland, and rarely found in the submandibular gland. We recently encountered a patient with acinic cell carcinoma of the submandibular gland exhibiting multiple hyperechoic spots on ultrasound, and describe this case here.
A 31-year-old woman presented with the chief complaint of left submandibular pain. Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging revealed a mass with a long axis of 9 mm in the left submandibular gland. Ultrasonography demonstrated a hypoechoic lesion with a long axis of 8 mm, containing multiple hyperechoic spots, each of which measured approximately 1 mm. Since the possibility of malignancy could not be ruled out, with a diagnosis of submandibular tumor, surgery for submandibular gland tumor resection was performed under general anesthesia in July 2010. The histopathological diagnosis was acinic cell carcinoma. The stroma of the tumor exhibited hyalinization, partially with calcification. The postoperative course was uneventful and the patient was discharged from the hospital one week after surgery. At present, after a postoperative follow-up of 19 months, the patient has no evidence of recurrence or metastasis.
