The research poster titled “Clinical and Sonographic Evaluation of Major Salivary Gland Tumors,” by student Sara Kadhim Musair, supervised by Professor Fawaz Al-Aswad from the Department of Oral Diagnosis at the College of Dentistry, University of Baghdad, was accepted for presentation at the International Conference on Dental Sciences and Advanced Dentistry in the United Kingdom.
The research aimed to explore the differences between benign and malignant salivary gland tumors using clinical examinations, in addition to studying these differences using ultrasound.
The study included examining the echogenicity of the tissue, internal calcification, cystic changes, focal lesion boundaries, lymph node enlargement, tumor shape, duct dilation and calcification, and blood supply distribution using color Doppler ultrasound and standard ultrasound. The study recommended that the most common benign and malignant tumors were polymorphic adenoma and mucocutaneous carcinoma, respectively. Malignant tumors exhibited irregular shape, heterogeneous hyperplasia, and lymphadenopathy. They also showed more central vascularization and no distal acoustic enhancement. Malignant tumors had calcified lesions.
Benign tumors had oval, lobulated, hypoechoic, homogeneous, well-defined borders, did not invade surrounding tissues, primarily peripheral vascularization, and exhibited posterior acoustic enhancement.
