الفهرس 
ANATOMY OF THE PAROTID GLANDOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background: Surgical approach to parotid tumors is different for benign and malignant neoplasms, but the clinical symptoms do not correlate well with histology and only few symptoms, as facial palsy, allow the diagnosis of malignancy. Therefore, preoperative imaging has assumed a major role in surgical planning for assessing the location and malignancy of the tumor.
Purpose: To investigate the potential application of new MRI techniques with emphasis to diffusion weighted echo planar imaging (DW-EPI) in characterization and differentiation of various entities of parotid gland tumors and to correlate diffusion patterns & ADC values of different parotid lesions with their pathological nature.
Patients and Methods: This prospective descriptive analytic study included 25 (14 female and 11 male) patients. Patients ages ranged from 3 – 69 year with a mean of 33.14 ± 22.40 (mean ± SD). All the patients presented to our hospital ”National Cancer Institute” during the past year. Comprehensive explanations of the procedures were done for all cases including the associated risks and contraindications.
Results: This study included 25 (11 male and 14 female) patients. Patients ages ranged from 2-68 year. 32% of lesions were found in the right parotid gland, 56% were found in the left parotid gland and 12% were found bilaterally in both parotid glands. 16% of the studied lesions were found in the deep lobe, 56% were found in the superficial lobe while 28% of lesions existed in both lobes.
Conclusion: The diffusion weighted imaging and ADC value give appreciable information about tumor cellularity with tissue contrast between the active and necrotic areas within the tumor. This would be valuable and could direct the beneficial site for interventional procedure and biopsy to be taken from the viable tumoural tissue especially in case with non-enhanced studies due to renal impairment.