Translate this page into:
Warthin-like low-grade mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the minor salivary gland: A diagnostic & therapeutic dilemma of this commingle appearance
*For correspondence: pustidr1@gmail.com
-
Received: ,
This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
This article was originally published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow and was migrated to Scientific Scholar after the change of Publisher.
A 17 yr old male child† presented to the department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, AB Shetty Memorial Institute of Dental Sciences, Mangaluru, India, in August 2019, with a history of painful palatal mass of five years' duration (Fig. 1A). Wide excision of the mass was done under local anaesthesia (Fig. 1B). Histopathological examination showed a neoplasm with multiloculated cystic architecture, remarkably similar to that of Warthin tumour (Fig. 2A). The cysts were lined by stratified or bilayered epithelium, with supporting stroma packed with small lymphocytes (Fig. 2B). One small 1 mm focus had a different morphology, comprising smaller cystic or glandular structures filled with mucin (Fig. 2C and D) lined by attenuated epithelial cells, mucocytes with adjacent epidermoid cells and intermediate cells. This was suggestive of mucoepidermoid carcinoma. Histopathological analysis of tumour section led to diagnosis of Warthin-like mucoepidermoid carcinoma. The overall condition of the patient was good on a follow up after one month.
- (A) Soft tissue palatal mass. (B) Postoperative photograph after closure.
- (A) Cystic glandular structures filled with mucin with adjacent epidermoid cells (arrow) and intermediate (double arrow) cells (H and E, ×10). (B) Warthin tumour-like architecture with multiple cystic formations containing lymphocytes (H and E, ×100). (C) Periodic Acid Schiff (PAS) staining showing mucin filled spaces (PAS, ×100). (D) PAS staining showing cystic spaces filled with mucin (PAS, ×100).
Warthin-like mucoepidermoid carcinoma is not been widely recognized and can be misdiagnosed as Warthin tumour. The need for diagnostic awareness of this variant of mucoepidermoid carcinoma is challenging because Warthin tumour and mucoepidermoid carcinoma are not normally considered differential diagnoses of one another.
Conflicts of Interest: None.
