Abstract

Acinic cell tumor of parotid gland is uncommon. In 1892, Nasse first described four parotid adenomas composed of cells similar to normal acinus cells. Since then, many additional reports have appeared. In view of the presumed benign course and the dominant type of cells resembling normal serous acidic cell, the name "acinic cell adenoma" was introduced. However, Buxton et al. first described that some of these lesions were malignant and they classified them into two categories. The one was serous cell adenoma which was benign lesion, and the other was serous cell adenocarcinoma which was the malignant counterpart, though the latter didn't exibit the usual morphologic criteria of malignancy. Since then, investigations have disclosed that this type of tumor was not benign but could both recur and metastasize hematogenously even to the lung. Godwin et al. had proposed the term "acinic cell adenocarcinoma", but currently the usual term is acinic cell tumor due to its slow growing nature. We describe a case of acinic cell tumor of parotid gland with brief review of the literature and a discussion concerning clinical, histopathological and histogenetic aspects.