Abstract
Salivary duct carcinoma (SDC) originating from the minor salivary glands is extremely rare. We report a case of SDC arising from the minor salivary gland tissue at the tip of the tongue. A 67-year-old man presented with a complaint of a mass and pain in the tip of the tongue. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a high-signal area isolated from the anterior lingual gland at the tip of the tongue. Since fine-needle-aspiration-cytology failed to diagnose a benign or malignant tumor, a diagnosis of suspected SDC was made by intraoperative rapid diagnosis, and the tumor was resected. The histopathological diagnosis was SDC. SDC is a high-grade malignant tumor of the salivary gland that is prone to local recurrence, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis. However, these results apply only to parotid and submandibular gland primary tumors, which occur more frequently. The prognosis of SDC of minor salivary gland primary tumors is not still clearly understood. In this report, the patient with SDC from the minor salivary gland tissue at the tip of the tongue had no recurrence or metastasis 14 years after the surgery.