A DETAILED study of 22 patients with mucoepidermoid tumors of the salivary glands, observed and treated at the Tata Memorial Hospital over a period of 25 years (1941 through 1965), has disclosed some interesting facts.
The incidence of mucoepidermoid tumor is infrequent, and the diagnosis is based on characteristic histological appearance. The mucoepidermoid tumor as a distinct pathologic entity was recognized fairly recently. In 1945, Stewart et al1 were first to report these tumors as mucoepidermoid tumors. They reported 45 cases from a total of 700 tumors of major salivary glands seen at the Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, New York. They classified these tumors as benign and malignant. However, they cautioned that benign did not mean innocent, and stated that it would be preferable to term them as "relatively favorable" and "highly unfavorable."
Foote and Frazell,2 from the same institute, while reporting on a larger