A Review of Signet Ring Cells in Salivary Gland Tumors

Signet Ring Cells (SRCs) are often seen in gastrointestinal tract, breast, bile duct, and lung invasive carcinomas. Observing these cells in benign and malignant lesions of the salivary glands is usual. Signet-ring cell adenocarcinoma is rare and is commonly seen in the secondary salivary glands. The presence of SRCs in other neoplasms is usually associated with poor prognosis; however, the prognosis and the survival of malignant tumors of the salivary glands containing SRCs are not well known and few studies have been conducted on this topic. In this review article, 18 articles were reviewed from 1984 to 2017 in the PubMed, Google Scholar, and MEDLINE databases with the keywords of “salivary glands”, “parotid”, “submandibular”, “sublingual”, and “signet ring cells”. Viewing SRCs in the salivary glands is not common. Although the SRC adenocarcinoma has a low incidence, some of them may have been reported as Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) and in fact, have a higher incidence. SRC adenocarcinoma of the salivary glands must be differentially diagnosed with more common tumors of these glands. Further studies are required to determine the exact prevalence of these salivary tumors that contain SRCs. Also, it seems necessary to predict their biological behavior.