Warthin's tumor and cigarette smoking

Abstract

Warthin's tumor is a relatively uncommon salivary gland neoplasm, traditionally considered a disease of men. Recent reports have brought this assumption into question by identifying a substantial percentage of patients who are women. Furthermore, several reports have attempted to correlate cigarette smoking with development of Warthin's tumor. We retrospectively studied all cases of parotid tumor entered in the Brooke Army Medical Center Tumor Registry from 1973 to 1993. Relative percentages of benign and malignant disease, as well as frequency of individual tumor types, in general mirrored those in earlier reports. A high proportion of Warthin's tumor-23% of all tumors-was identified. More than one third of patients with Warthin's tumor were women. Also, 94% of patients with Warthin's tumor had a history of tobacco use; for all other tumor types combined, only 60% of patients had a history of tobacco use. This statistical difference supports the correlation between cigarette smoking and Warthin's tumor.