Warthin's Tumor of the Parotid Gland

이하선의 Warthin씨 종양

Warthin's tumor is a benign and slow growing tumor found exclusively in the parotid gland or the periparotid lymph nodes. It mostly affects males between the age of forty to seventy years and is closely related with smoking history. Between January 1981 and June 1996, 42 patients underwent surgical excision of Warthin's tumor of the parotid gland; which made up 10.6% of all parotid gland surgeries(398 cases) during the same period. Their ages ranged from 36 to 75 years with a mean age of 56 years. There were 33 male and 9 female patients with a 4.3 : 1 male to female ratio. The majority of the tumors were situated in the parotid tail whereas one was in the deep lobe. Bilateral simultaneous involvements of the parotid gland were found in 4 patients(9.5%) ; therefore total of 46 parotid glands were involved. Four(8.7%) of the 46 parotid glands had multifocal tumors ranginging from two to three lumps. Tumor sizes varied from 1.5 to 6.0cm with mean diameter of 3.lcm. Of the 42 patients, 26(61.9%) were diagnosed preoperatively or peroperatively by means of CT scans, ultrasound, 99m-Tc. scan, fine needle aspiration cytology or intraoperative frozen section biopsy. Of the 46 tumors, 30 underwent a superficial(n=29) or total(n=1) parotidectomy and for 16 cases with tumors suspected preoperatively or peroperatively of being single Warthin's tumor, only enucleation was performed. No cases of recurrence were identified during the follow up period regardless of type of operation performed, however the postoperative complication rate was much higher in the parotidectomy group(33.3%) than in the enucleation only group(12.5%). We feel that an enucleation procedure may be appropriate for the patients with single Warthin's tumor.