Death Penalty
None of the 20 cases reviewed has suffered facial palsy, apart from four which developed transient weakness immediately post-operatively, presumably due to neurapraxia, which has recurred in the five-year period under review.
Abstract
parotid tumours are locally recurrent and as such should be treated by radical local excision when first seen, irrespective of its minute histology. In outline our technique has been as follows, the total operative time averaging 1-14 hours. After Blair's skin incision the trunk of the facial nerve is identified X in. (6.4 mm.) below the bony external auditory meatus in the sulcus between the posterior part of the parotid gland and the mastoid process. The main branches are then dissected anteriorly regardless of damage to the gland itself, an adequate margin of normal parotid tissue being removed with the tumour. None of the 20 cases reviewed has suffered facial palsy, apart from four which developed transient weakness immediately post-operatively, presumably due to neurapraxia. None has recurred in the five-year period under review. No case has developed a post-operative salivary fistula. In only one case was ligation of the external carotid carried out, and this is a practice we have now abandoned.-I am, etc.,