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Parotid Pleomorphic Adenoma

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This was a patient who had a palpable abnormality.

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Superficially, in the left side of the face.

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To identify and detect a lesion,

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I usually go with the T1-weighted scans first.

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T1-weighted scans because you have the nice,

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bright outline of fat that is in the parotid gland.

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As well as superficial fat.

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So, as we scroll,

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This patient's scan ends from the skull base downward.

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We come upon a marker which is very helpful to us,

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That has been placed over the palpable abnormality seen

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on the left side. Let's identify the anatomy.

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This is the masseter muscle.

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This is the pterygoid muscle.

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This is the mandible.

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This is the brighter parotid tissue.

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Brighter than muscle tissue,

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But not as bright as the subcutaneous fat.

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You will see that we can see the parotid duct.

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Wharton's duct. I'm sorry.

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My mistake.

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Stenson's duct inserting here into the buccal mucosa.

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And we have our zygomaticus muscle.

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So, our abnormality is here.

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It's somewhat heterogeneous signal intensity.

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Now,

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This is likely the darker signal intensity

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Is likely the abnormality.

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And the intermediate signal intensity is likely the

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Parotid tissue that is encapsulating the mass.

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You can see on the normal right side,

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We have parotid tissue overlying the masseter muscle.

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And then we have Stenson's duct and zygomaticus

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muscle and the buccinator musculature.

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On the T2-weighted scan,

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We see that this mass

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Is homogeneously bright. On T2-weighted imaging,

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We can see the parotid tissue,

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The normal parotid tissue, superficial to it,

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And we see its border with the masseter muscle.

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If we zoom

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Even further.

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Let me see whether I can work the zoom a little bit more

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And slide this over.

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We might even be able to see what some people would call

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The dark signal intensity capsule around the lesion.

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Let's look at the post-gadolinium enhanced scan.

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And

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And has a somewhat peculiar enhancement characteristic,

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Despite the nice bright signal on

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The T2-weighted imaging.

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This may, in part, be a phenomenon of scanning too early.

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But as we come anteriorly here,

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we see that the lesion actually shows good

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enhancement on the more delayed

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coronal image. Let me magnify again.

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Okay, so on the delayed post-gad, it kind of fills in,

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and that is not unusual for a pleomorphic

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adenoma to have it.

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The initial scan shows less enhancement

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than the delayed scan.

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So delayed accumulation of contrast dye is one of the

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characteristic features of a pleomorphic adenoma.

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Now, as it happens, in this case,

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we did do the diffusion-weighted imaging.

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Again,

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these are thicker sections and not as high resolution.

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Overall, there's the lesion on the DWI.

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On our ADC map,

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we can see that it's relatively bright in ADC,

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suggesting higher ADC values,

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which is in keeping with a benign

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tumor of pleomorphic adenoma.

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So a nice demonstration of a pleomorphic adenoma

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of the superficial parotid tissue.

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Overlying the masseter muscle,

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showing one of its characteristic features,

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which is this delay in accumulation of contrast

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between the axial and the coronal

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subsequent imaging,

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as well as bright high ADC indicative

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of a benign neoplasm.

Report

Description

Faculty

David M Yousem, MD, MBA

Professor of Radiology, Vice Chairman and Associate Dean

Johns Hopkins University

Tags

Salivary Glands

Neuroradiology

Neoplastic

MRI

Head and Neck

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