The role of diagnostic imaging procedures in chronic recurrent childhood parotitis.

Background: Chronic recurrent parotitis represents a disease of still uncer tain etiology that can be divided into a childhood and an adult form. Sialo graphy is still the imaging procedure of choice. Method: We report about a nine-year-old girl who had had six episodes of parotitis in the past two ye ars. MR sialography is presented as an alternative to conventional sialogra phy. MR was performed with a 1.5 T whole-body tomograph using a high resolu tion 3D-CISS sequence. Results and Conclusion: MR sialography does not requ ire any contrast medium. It primarily images liquid structures, and the flo w of saliva can be adequately demonstrated after stimulation with ascorbic acid. These special features of MR sialography allow its use also during ac ute episodes of sialadenitis, thus providing a significant improvement over conventional sialography. Furthermore, no overlapping occurs as in convent ional summation images, due to the multiplanar reconstruction features.