Surgical treatment of benign parapharyngeal space tumours: presentation of two clinical cases and revision of the literature

• Martin Fernández Ferro ^[1] ; Jacinto Fernández Sanromán ^[1] ; Alberto Costas López ^[1] ; Jesús Sandoval Gutierrez ^[1] ; Annahys López de Sanchez ^[1]
  1. [1] Hospital POVISA

     Hospital POVISA

     Vigo, España

     
• Localización: Medicina oral, patología oral y cirugía bucal. Ed. inglesa, ISSN-e 1698-6946, Vol. 13, Nº. 1 (January), 2008
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Parapharyngeal space (PPS) tumours, most of them benign, account for some 0.5% of tumours of the head and neck.

    The importance of these tumours lies mainly in two aspects: on the one hand, the difficulty of early diagnosis, due to the lack of symptoms in the initial stages and, on the other, the extreme complications of performing surgery in the parapharyngeal region. This article discusses two clinical cases of parapharyngeal space tumours: a 45 year old man and a 60 year old woman. We revise the scientific literature and analyse the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures used, placing special emphasis on describing the different surgical approaches to the parapharyngeal space: transcervical, transcervical-transparotid, transpalatal or transoral, transmandibular and orbitozygomatic, all of which, used alone or combined with others, allow for complete resection of these tumours with minimum morbidity.