Abstrakt
The diagnosis of pleomorphic adenoma (PA) of salivary glands is usually straightforward posing few diagnostic problems for the general surgical histopathologist. The purpose of our investigation was to present a series of 22 cases of PA of major salivary glands, each of which contained small foci of tumor within vascular spaces.
This feature has previously been described very rarely in PA and may represent a significant diagnostic pitfall. The patients included 12 women and 10 men, ranging in age at diagnosis from 17 to 82 years.
Histopathologically, all 22 tumors displayed the features of PA with mixed epithelial and myoepithelial growth patterns and chondromyxoid areas. None of these neoplasms showed any cytologic evidence of malignancy.
In all cases, there were multiple dilated thin-walled and/or muscular thick-walled blood vessels containing small intraluminal collections of neoplastic cells with or without myxoid stromal components.