Salivary gland tumours: is colour Doppler imaging of added value in their preoperative assessment?

Using a Toshiba SSA-270A Colour Duplex Scanner, 15 patients with suspected parotid and submandibular gland tumours had preoperative duplex scanning done. Peak systolic doppler shifts (fmax) were recorded and their vascularity was also subjectively scored. There were no arteries identified within the substance of contralateral normal glands. All recordings were analysed retrospectively and an independent histological assessment of tumours was made. Pleomorphic adenomas (n = 9) had a median peak systolic frequency (fmax) of 0.8 kHz, while adenolymphomas (n = 4) had a fmax of 1.65 and the two malignant tumours had fmax of 4.5 (P = 0.007 Kruskal-Wallis test). There appears to be a strong correlation between the fmax and the subjective vascular score (Corr 0.92). Colour duplex scanning is a non-invasive procedure which may be of help in the preoperative assessment of salivary gland tumours.