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Twenty-nine patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) with skull base or intracranial involvement were analyzed by high-resolution computed tomography (CT). We divided the path of the primary tumor spread into six directions from the nasopharynx. The most common direction of spread was the anterior region, and the second most common was the posterolateral region. Recently, high resolution CT has been used for the diagnosis of the nasopharynx. T-staging of NPC was made according to the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) TNM classification system, depending on clinical findings and conventional radiograph examinations (not including CT). CT images were valuable for detection of the primary tumor involvement of the skull base region in NPC. Furthermore, bone target CT images were better for searching for subtle bony changes. Therefore, we recommend that CT should be used in T-staging of NPC systematically. When CT is used as one of the staging criteria, some patients with NPC with subtle bony changes will be upstaged.

Three patients had a painless mass in the parotid (two patients) or submandibular regions (one patient). These patients were 70, 66, and 65 years of age, respectively. One patient was male and the other two were female. No symptoms suggesting the presence of autoimmune sialadenitis had been noticed, although one patient suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Histologic study showed that small atypical lymphoid cells with slightly irregular and indented nuclear contours proliferated diffusely and secondary lymph follicles were distributed at random among them. These findings are similar to those that we recently reported for intermediate lymphocytic lymphoma (ILL) of the thyroid gland arising in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis. A high frequency of ILL among our series of salivary lymphomas (three of nine cases) is discussed.