Diagnosis and Treatment of Carotid Body Tumor-Case Report

Carotid body tumors are rare benign tumors of the neck but dangerous because their vascular nature and position between Internal and External carotid arteries quite sitting on the carotid bifurcation. Carotid body tumours are paragangliomas, tumors, originating from paraganglionic bodies of autonomous nerve system of the embriological neural crest and increasing gradually. Despite their gradual developing nature, slow and painless it is critical to reach early diagnosis and tailor surgical plan for carotid body tumors due to their potential of being malignant and local aggressive development, with invasion of the essential vessel like ICA or compression neural tissues-last 4 cranial nerves. Optimal management of cervical paragangliomas should include a thorough preoperative evaluation, accurate definition of the surgical anatomy, and exclusion of synchronous paragangliomas. A combined therapeutic approach by a multidisciplinary team including surgeons and interventional radiologists provides safe and effective management of cervical paragangliomas with very low morbidity and excellent outcomes. In this article, we present a case of carotid body tumor and importance of team effort to obtain the best informations, imaging, for the best surgical results also seen as common effort –always a team-ENT, vascular surgeon, interventional radiologist and maxilla, complications, and follow-up.