Carotid body tumor imaging: MRI, ultrasound, and elastography with surgical management

Abstract

A carotid body tumor is an uncommon tumor that develops from the carotid body. Carotid body tumor, also called paraganglioma, is often benign in nature and mostly found in the neck. They make up 0.5% of all body tumors and resemble glomus jugulare, glomus tympanicum, and pheochromocytoma, which are paragangliomas of the body. We present a case of a 22-year-old male patient who presented to the medical outpatient department with complaints of swelling in the left carotid triangle for 1 month. The patient had hoarseness of voice with odynophagia and dysphagia. We found out the diagnosis of carotid body tumor when the patient came for ultrasound, and the diagnosis was later confirmed on magnetic resonance imaging. The gold standard treatment for carotid body tumors is surgery. The surgical categorization by Shamblin et al. marks a turning point in the evaluation of these tumors’ resectability and is still used to predict vascular morbidity, and according to it, our patient later underwent sub adventitial tumor excision.

Keywords

• Carotid body tumor
• MRI
• Ultrasound
• Elastography
• Postoperative