Re: Diagnosing Sjogren's Syndrome: An Introduction

[graziela]

Hi!

Any help here please?

My lip biopsy gave me this:

"NO MINOR SALIVARY GLANDS"....

Anyone understand?

:=|

[irish]

In other words no glands were harvested? The doctor goofed!!!!

I am not trying to be smart, but some docs are not very good at doing these lip biopsies. A person needs to ask the doc how many they do a year or have done totally. The docs need to do then often in order to maintain a certain amount of expertise. I would want the doc to do a certain number a month or year.

When I had my lip biopsy done years ago I did not know this and was lucky enough to have a very good ENT who knew what he was doing.

Welcome to this site as there are lots of people here with a lot of information and experience in being sjogrens patients. Ask any question and someone will try to help you out. Good luck. Irish

[graziela]

Thank you!
In Brazil normally means the GLANDS are death...  (someone told me)
An adult person should have at least 600 glands...

Now I dont know what to think.

My right parotid is death too.

:-|

[SJSman]

Hi Graziela,

You are right - there are something like 600 to 900 salivary gland buds inside of your mouth.  Taking three of them for analysis does not cause any problems because you will still have about 897 buds remaining to do their job.

Irish is probably correct - the doctor who took the tissue sample from your inner lip probably missed, and no salivary buds were present in the tissue sample.

However, there is another reason that could cause no salivary buds to be present on in the sample:  If you have had Sjogren's for many years, then all of your salivary buds may have been completely destroyed and replaced by scar tissue.  In this case, you have scars instead of buds in your tissue sample, but the doctor will still grade it as being positive for Sjogren's.  In fact, having no remaining salivary buds because they have all been completely killed off by Sjogren's is the ultimate positive sample.

Your doctor will tell you if the buds were simply missing, or if instead they are all long dead.  If they are long dead, then I suspect that your mouth is always very dry, and has been that way for many years.

If the tissue sample was too small or otherwise missed collecting any buds, then have the procedure done over.  The knowledge gained from a lip biopsy analysis in the diagnosis of Sjogren's is extremely valuable, and is well worth the discomfort in the vast majority of cases. 

[graziela]

Thank you, so much.

I´m feeling so devasted. My history is longger, I had a hemorragic stroke, with no answers... and now, they believe, could be a vasculite.

I´m scary. But I know it´s a fase.

[ ]s,