Imaging of the Parotid Impostors

Abstract

Patients presenting with a parotid region lump may occasionally have a lesion arising from the spaces around, rather than from within, the parotid space. These lesions, referred to in this article as the Parotid Imposters, in most of the cases will require alternative diagnostic and therapeutic pathways and hence it is important to know beforehand what the nature of such a lesion could be before assuming that we are dealing with a parotid space lesion. In this article, we will discuss some of these lesions and review their imaging features.

Keywords

• Parotid mimics
• Parotid impostors