DIAGNOSTIC ACCURACY OF COLOR ANDPULSED DOPPLER IN THE EVALUATION OF PAROTID GLAND TUMORS

Background: The parotid glands are the largest salivary glands in humans and are frequently involved in various primary & systemic disease processes. The most common benign parotid gland tumor is pleomorphic adenoma. Around 20% of parotid tumors are malignant with most common parotid tumors being mucoepidermoid carcinoma and adenoid cystic carcinoma. Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of pulsed and color Doppler for the evaluation of parotid gland cancer.   Methods: It was a cross sectional study by design carried out in Department of Radiology and Department of Maxillofacial Surgery, Mayo Hospital – Lahore in a duration of three year. All the patients were examined with mind-ray 7.5 MHz linear transducer. There are three methods used collectively; Grey Scale, color Doppler and Pulsed Doppler in sonographic examination. Color Doppler and pulsed Doppler demonstrate number of blood vessels within the tumor, their Peak Systolic Velocity and Resistive Index respectively. Histo-pathological results were correlated post operatively with the data obtained from Doppler ultrasound. Data was analyzed using SPSS 23.0   Results: In this study, 192 patients were included .The mean age was 39.42 ± 11.93 years. 58.85% (112) were male patients and 41.15 %( 80) patients were females. The solid masses with regular margins were evaluated and the diagnostic accuracy of pulsed Doppler was found to be 87.5% taking histopathology as gold standard.   Conclusion: This study shows pulsed Doppler to be more accurate tool for diagnosis of parotid gland tumor as compared to color Doppler taking histopathology as gold standard.