Long-term study of patients with severe forms of Sjögren syndrome and/or myoepithelial sialadenitis

It is well known that the incidence of malignant lymphomas (non-Hodgkin type) is increased in patients with Sjögren's syndrome. The occurrence of malignant diseases was retrospectively studied in 62 patients. In the course of the disease two patients developed a non-Hodgkin lymphoma, one patient developed a transitional-cell carcinoma located in the nasopharynx and three patients developed a squamous-cell carcinoma located in the salivary glands. The large quantity of epithelial carcinomas seems to be remarkable, especially compared with the number of non-Hodgkin lymphomas. It might be possible that early surgical treatment of persistent or progressive swelling of the salivary glands helps to prevent the occurrence of malignant lymphoma in patients with known myoepithelial sialadenitis.