SIALOGRAM

[cport]

Hi everyone,

Yesterday i had a sialogram of the parotid gland,this is where they put a needle into the opening of the gland in the inside of the cheek in your mouth and then inject a dye into it to see if there are any blockages. Apart from being very very painful they have said mine is fine and i have no blockages so they can't understand why i have so much pain coming from my salivary gland on my right side.

Anyone else ever experiance this.

Claire x

[Joy Cox]

Claire, Need some explanation about my R parotid continued issues.

What type of doc did you see? Was it done in office or out-patient at hospital? Was there any x-ray involved to show what inside of parotid looked like; ie, maybe tumor or stones?

Just wondering... and I'm 'dumb' about this as you can read.  Thanks for any explanation you offer.    Joy

[cport]

Hi there Joy,

It is all confusing i know so it is nice if we can find someone that has an explanation for the things we're not sure on.

I was actually refered to the Maxilo Facial Dr from the Rheumatologist. She says they are the better ones to look into things to do with the salivary glands rather than ENT Dr's as they specialise in these matters and understand Sjogren's syndrome better.

I have had in enlarged right parotid gland for some time now but i'm getting to the point where i'm getting alot of pain down the jaw line and just starting up the chhek. The pain doesn't just come when i'm eating things but comes if i laugh to hard or if i'm blowing up balloons or blowing on the kids dinner. It is so sore. I saw the Maxilo Dr who thought that maybe i had a blockage...stones or something and thats what was causing the intense pain. As it was the sialogram showed that there was no blockage so he couldn't understand why i was in so much pain. The person that did the sialogram was just a radiologist though so i will have to wait and see the maxilo facial Dr again for his interpretation of the scan.

What they do for the actual scan is make you drink some pure lemon so they can find the opening inside the mouth where the gland starts and then they stick a blunt needle into the hole and inject a dye. They have a scanning machine at the side of your head where the gland is and when they inject the dye they look at the monitor and see if the dye moves threw ok. When they pushed the dye through the syringe into the gland i almost shot through the roof,it was so sore. As i said he didn't see any blockage and said the anatomy of the gland looked ok. I don't know though weather they can tell with this scan weather or not the gland is cancerous. I have had an ultrasound of the parotid and they have said it is enlarged but looks normal. I just wish they would byopsy it and get that over and done with rather than keep messing about with all these different scans.

Sorry to go on so much just hope this helps you a bit with what you need to know.

What i would like to know from anyone out there is if they have had the scan done and it was clear with no blockages and weather they ever found out what was causing there problems....could it be that it is cancerous and that it wouldn't show up on this sort of scan.

Claire x