Glomus tumors

Glomus tumours of the temporal bone occur in the region of the jugular bulb middle ear. They are rare, highly vascular, slow growing tumours and most are benign. Tumours that originate from the jugular bulb and extend to involve the middle ear are referred to as glomus jugular tumours. Those that are found in the middle ear around the otic ganglia in the tympanic plexus are known as Glomus tympanicum. Yhese tumours occur predominantly in women in the fifth and sixth decades of life. Because of the insidious onset of symptoms, these tumours often go unnoticed and there is often a significant delay in diagnosis. Morbidity in these cases is determined by their size and position. 1. To study the age/sex incidence of patients suffering from glomus tumours of the temporal bone. 2. To see various clinical presentations with which these tumours present and their variation according to the age and sex. Our study design was non-inter-ventional descriptive. This study was performed at CMH Rawalpindi and Multan from January 2000 to June 2002. We included ten patients of glomus tumours of the temporal bone in our study. 8 out of these were females and two were males. Though most of the patients belonged to middle age group yet few were also from the younger and older groups. All the patients underwent CT scan with and without contrast, MRI of the requisite site and carotid angiography. We found that these tumours were predominantly present in females, mostly in the middle age group. Individual symptoms were studied in detail and their presence was found to be directly proportional to the increasing age of patients. It is concluded that due to the slow growth of this tumour the diagnosis is often delayed until it is extensive. Therefore clinicians should be more vigilant about this rare disease and must keep it in their differentials