ArticleFrontiers in surgery2026
Preoperative ultrasound risk stratification of submandibular gland lesions: a retrospective cohort study.
Article in Frontiers in surgery, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Submandibular gland lesions are rare and diagnostically challenging because benign neoplasms, inflammatory mass lesions, carcinomas, and lymphomas may present with overlapping sonographic features. While ultrasound is central to the preoperative work-up, most malignancy prediction models were developed in mixed major salivary gland cohorts dominated by parotid tumors. Their performance in the submandibular gland remains unclear. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients who underwent submandibulectomy for an intraglandular lesion at a tertiary referral center between 2019 and 2025. All patients had standardized preoperative ultrasound and histopathologic confirmation. Ultrasound images were reviewed while blinded to clinical and histopathological outcomes. Clinical variables, conventional sonographic features, the taller-than-wide (TTW) ratio, the score proposed by Lo et al., and a TTW-modified version of this score were evaluated for their ability to discriminate benign from malignant lesions. Results: A total of 120 patients were included (mean age 58.4 ± 17.4 years; 75% male). Final histology showed 96 benign lesions (80.0%), 13 carcinomas (10.8%), and 11 lymphomas (9.2%). Among clinical features, only nerve palsy was associated with malignancy (4.2% vs. 0%, Conclusion: Preoperative ultrasound is valuable in the diagnostic assessment of submandibular gland lesions, particularly for identifying irregular margins and suspicious cervical lymph nodes, but morphology alone has limited ability to distinguish benign from malignant disease. Parotid-derived ultrasound risk scores, including TTW-based modification, showed poor transferability to the submandibular gland.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.