Importance: Basal cell adenocarcinoma (BCAC) of the minor salivary gland is an extremely rare disease: the most recent substantive literature review reports only 25 cases. Owing to the rarity of this disease, it has not yet been well characterized in the literature.
Objective: We sought to expand the knowledge of minor salivary gland BCAC by performing an exhaustive literature review and adding to it a new case that is rare owing to the tumor's size, aggressive nature, and mixed histologic pattern. The review emphasizes epidemiologic patterns, diagnostic characteristics, treatment patterns, and expected prognosis for minor salivary gland BCAC.
Evidence acquisition: In June 2012, PubMed was queried using the term "salivary gland basal cell adenocarcinoma," and the resultant articles were reviewed. Those specifically mentioning a minor salivary gland BCAC were included in this study. Those that did not differentiate minor salivary gland BCAC from major salivary gland BCAC were excluded. The search was not limited by language and included articles from North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia from 1978 to June 2012.
Results: The PubMed search resulted in 195 articles, of which 33 articles reported at least 1 case of minor salivary gland BCAC. We report herein 72 cases of minor salivary gland BCAC (71 cases from the literature review and 1 new case reported herein). The mean patient age at the time of presentation was 56 years (range, 24-90 years), and the disease showed no sex predilection. The most common location was the palate, and the average lesions size was 2.4 cm (range, 0.7-4.2 cm). The treatment modality of choice was wide local excision (n = 57; 79%). There was a high local recurrence rate (n = 30; 41%) but a low rate of distant metastasis (n = 8; 11%).
Conclusions and relevance: We present a comprehensive review of minor salivary gland BCAC, describing nearly 3 times as many cases as has been previously reported. This review characterizes a rare disease and increases awareness of the disease among otolaryngologists. Minor salivary gland BCAC is similar to major salivary gland BCAC and minor salivary gland tumors in general with regard to patient age, sex, tumor site, treatment modality, recurrence, metastasis, and mortality.