King's College London

Objectives: To validate the use of neck dissection as part of the management of parotid carcinoma.

Design, setting, participants: Retrospective pathological and clinical data were retrieved from the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital Head and Neck pathology archive for all primary parotid carcinoma resected at the centre between 1992 and 2014.

Main outcome measure: The main outcome measure was the incidence of metastatic disease. Results: 54 of the 82 cases identified underwent a neck dissection. Nodal metastases were detected in 10 cases of carcinomas ex-pleomorphic adenoma (high grade, invasive), 2 salivary duct carcinomas, 1 adenocarinoma not otherwise specified (NOS) (high grade), 1 adenoid cystic carcinoma and 1 acinic cell carcinoma (high grade). No metastases were found in cases of acinic cell carcinoma (low grade), mucoepidermoid carcinoma (low grade), epithelial-myoepithelial carcinoma and non-invasive carcinoma ex-pleomorphic adenoma.

Conclusions: The findings of this study support the use of routine neck dissection in treating carcinoma ex-pleomorphic adenoma (high grade, invasive), salivary duct carcinoma, adenocarcinoma NOS (high grade), adenoid cystic carcinoma and acinic cell carcinoma (high grade).