Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Mar 16, 2015; 3(3): 322-326
Published online Mar 16, 2015. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v3.i3.322
Intraparotid facial nerve schwannoma: A case report
Abhishek Jaiswal, Asit Ranjan Mridha, Devajit Nath, Ashu Seith Bhalla, Alok Thakkar
Abhishek Jaiswal, Ashu Seith Bhalla, Department of Radiodiagnosis, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, AIIMS, 110029 New Delhi, India
Asit Ranjan Mridha, Devajit Nath, Department of Pathology, AIIMS, 110029 New Delhi, India
Alok Thakkar, Department of Otolaryngology and Rhinology, AIIMS, 110029 New Delhi, India
Author contributions: Jaiswal A, Mridha AR, Nath D, Bhalla AS and Thakkar A contributed to the writing of the case report in accordance with the standard proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
Ethics approval: This study was case report and so no approval was taken from our institute All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
Informed consent: Consent was taken from the patient at the time of carrying out all their investigations, not again at the time of writing case report.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ashu Seith Bhalla, MD, Professor, Department of Radiodiagnosis, All India Institute Of Medical Sciences, AIIMS, Street-Ansari nagar, 110029 New Delhi, India. ashubhalla1@yahoo.com
Telephone: +91-98-10329748
Received: September 16, 2014
Peer-review started: September 18, 2014
First decision: October 14, 2014
Revised: December 25, 2014
Accepted: January 9, 2015
Article in press: January 12, 2015
Published online: March 16, 2015
Processing time: 177 Days and 16.7 Hours
Abstract

Facial nerve schwannoma occurring within the parotid gland is a rare tumour. We report a case of schwannoma within the parotid gland in a young female patient, who underwent ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and subsequent surgical excision of the lesion. The lesion showed hyperintensity on T2-weighted and diffusion-weighted MRI. There was no adjacent lymphadenopathy. Although hyperintensity on diffusion-weighted MRI could suggest malignant tumours, the characteristic “string sign” provided the clue for the diagnosis of schwannoma.

Keywords: Parotid; Facial nerve; Schwannoma; String sign; Imaging

Core tip: There is a difference in an approach to surgery for benign and malignant parotid masses. For benign lesions, superficial parotidectomy is done; whereas in a case of malignant tumour total parotidectomy is performed with or without excision of the facial nerve. Clinically, it is very difficult to differentiate them because even malignant tumours have slow growth. Hence, here comes the role of imaging which could suggest the nature of the mass and narrow the differentials.