Liver metastasis from adenoid cystic carcinoma of the submandibular gland: a case report.

Background: Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy of epithelial origin. It involves a variety of histologic types and often has distant metastasis. ACC metastasis to the liver is rare and usually involves spread to other organs.

Case Presentation: We report a case of liver metastasis from a submandibular gland adenoid cystic carcinoma 11 years after resection of tumor. The patient was admitted to our hospital due to a liver-occupying lesion found by abdominal B-ultrasound, CT and MRI. A metastasis was found only in the liver, and after discussion the patient was treated with surgery. This tumor was histologically consistent with the diagnostic criteria of ACC. The patient was followed up 24 months after surgery, and showed no recurrence in the liver parenchyma at the site of operation or other organs.

Conclusions: ACC is a very rare tumor and its pathogenesis is not completely clear. There are few articles about the imaging findings of ACC in the liver, and so it was difficult for us to make a correct diagnosis in clinical practice. The diagnosis of ACC mainly relies on pathologic examination, so we summarize the correlation between imaging and pathology.