[Minor salivary gland tumours: a 10-year study]

Salivary gland tumours represent between 2 % and 6.5 %, approximately, of all head and neck tumours. The aim of this paper was to identify the frequency of minor salivary gland tumours among patients in the Oral Medicine Clinic of the Federal University of Paraná during the period from 1997 to 2007. A retrospective study was conducted on 1,923 histopathological analyses of oral lesions. Fourteen cases of salivary gland tumours were found, of which 7 were benign and 7 malignant. The lesions were localized mainly in the palate (71.5 %). By histological type, 50 % of the lesions were characterized as pleomorphic adenoma, 28.6 % mucoepidermoid carcinoma, 14.3 % cystic adenoid carcinoma and 7.1 % as polymorphous adenocarcinoma. These findings suggest that salivary gland tumours have a low incidence in the population and that the pleomorphic adenoma is the most common type of tumour, followed by mucoepidermoid carcinoma.