Page 17 - New epidemiological and PSMA-expression based paradigms in salivary gland tumors

salivary gland tumors have a surprisingly wide range of histological presentations. The 2017 classification of the world health organization (WHO) mentions 22 different primary salivary gland cancers [3]. These tumors have malignant characteristics such as invasive growth, mitotic figures, necrosis and genetic mutations [4].
BAC
Figure 4: Salivary gland pleomorphic adenoma (SGPA) (A), partly covered by healthy salivary gland tissue (B), but on the right it is covered by only a thin tumor capsule (C) (Courtesy of dr. M.F. van Velthuysen).
Epidemiology
Despite of the large number of different salivary glands cancers, their overall incidence is very low, with a reported incidence of 0.9 per 100,000 persons per year in the Netherlands and similar numbers in Denmark [5,6] (Figure 5). Men and women were affected equally and patients were treated with surgery and adjuvant radiotherapy in most cases. The relative 5-year survival in the Netherlands was 69%. The benign tumors have a larger share in salivary gland tumor incidence. In a defined regional population in the UK, there were roughly 7 benign tumors and 1 malignant per 100,000 persons per year [2]. Spiro et al. reported the pleomorphic adenoma as histological diagnosis in 45% of the salivary gland tumors in a large series in the US [7].
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General introduction and outline of this thesis
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