Heterotopic salivary tissue and branchial sinuses

Abstract

Heterotopic salivary tissue and branchial sinuses occur not infrequently (Goodman et al., 1981; Stingle and Priebe, 1974), caused probably by heteroplasia within remnants of the second cleft (Stingle, 1974). Bilateral lesions which presented clinically as branchial cleft sinuses have been removed from a patient's neck; both of them proved to be branchial cleft sinuses with elements of salivary tissue. The paper describes salivary tissue and branchial sinuses along the anterior border of the sternocleidomastoid muscle on both sides of the neck and bilateral preauricular fistulae occurring in a boy and probably in his sister.