Updated by Piper Wenzel, BS April 2024

• Benign tumor characterized by "increased proliferation and turnover of endothelial cells" (Huang et al. 2021)
• Hemangiomas may occur in any body region, but 65% start in the head and neck (Alanazi et al. 2024)
• Represents 0.4 to 0.6% of parotid tumors (Huang et al. 2021)
• Most commonly affect children under 1 year old (Huang et al. 2021)
• Generally presents as red or purpuric skin lesions in children (Huang et al. 2021)
• Generally presents as asymptomatic parotid swellings in adults (Huang et al. 2021)
• Typically involutes in the first decade when present as an infant whereas adult parotid hemangiomas do not regress (Alanazi et al. 2024)
• Classifications include cavernous, capillary, and mixed (Alanazi et al. 2024)
• Appears as "well-defined, lobulated, and uniformly enhancing lesion" (Alanazi et al. 2024)
• MRI (Alanazi et al. 2024)
  • T1-weighted: uniformly hypointense
  • T2-weighted: hyperintense with varying vascularity

References

Huang YT, Ou CY, Lee WT, Hsu HJ. Three Cases of Parotid Hemangiomas in Adults. Ear Nose Throat J. Published online December 14, 2021. doi:10.1177/01455613211067834

Alanazi FM, Alqahtani S, Alruwaili SH, Alzamil AA, AlGhamdi FR. Cavernous Hemangioma in the Parotid Gland of an Adult: A Case Report and Review of Literature. Cureus. 2024;16(1):e52285. Published 2024 Jan 15. doi:10.7759/cureus.52285