The
congenital absence of the major
salivary glands is a very infrequent disorder, in which several glands are usuallyinvolved at the same
time. Sometimes this disorder can be associated with other developmental anomalies.The unilateral aplasia of the
submandibular gland is an extremely rare finding with only 14 cases reported in theliterature. Clinically, this kind of
patients may complain of
dryness of the
mouth, difficulties in
chewing and
swallowing,severe
periodontal disease or multiple caries, but usually they follow an asymptomatic
course. Salivarygland aplasia can be diagnosed with a large variety of imaging
techniques, which include
computer tomography(CT),
magnetic resonance imaging (MR),
ultrasonography (US),
sialography, or
scintigraphy. In this
paper wereport a case of a
patient referred to our department with a long term and progressive growing
neck mass,
who hasan unilateral
submandibular gland aplasia associated to an ipsilateral
hypertrophy of the
sublingual gland (AU)