Vagal Body Tumors

Abstract

Glomic tissue was described in the cervical vagus by Aschoff and Goodhart (1909) and in relation to the ganglion nodosum of the vagus nerve in man by White (1935), with Stout reporting a pigmented malignant paraganglionic tumor of that structure in the same year. No further mention was made of this entity until 1950, when Lattes re-presented Stout’s original case and 2 additional cases of paraganglioma of the nodose ganglion. In this publication he stressed their nonchromaffin nature and tendency to multicentric origin as evidence of a system of nonchromaffin paraganglia or chemoreceptor organs of the head and neck. Subsequently, numerous reports appeared in the world literature of paraganglionic tumors of the cervical vagus nerve. Birrell (1953) proposed the term vagal body tumor, which gained wide acceptance. Other designations that appeared in the literature include: glomus intravagale tumor (Westbury, 1967); tumor of the paraganglion juxtavagale (Stewart et al., 1956); nonchromaffin paraganglioma of the vagus (King, 1955; Harrison et al., 1957); chemodectoma of the glomus intravagale (Perez et al., 1960; Doctor et al., 1965); glomus tumor of the vagal body (Papacharalampous, 1959); paraganglioma of the vagus nerve (Maguda and McCaughan, 1962); tumor of the ganglion nodosum of the vagus nerve (Linn and Proctor, 1956); chemodectoma of the vagus nerve (Kircher, 1967); chemodectoma of the vagal body (Keener, 1959); and vagal nodose body chemodectoma (Ebaugh and Holt, 1967).