TUMORS OF THE GLOMUS JUGULARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH THE JUGULAR VEIN

DURING the past six years the term glomus jugulare has been employed with increasing frequency to designate certain tumors of the middle ear arising from small vascular bodies normally found in the adventitia of the jugular vein near the ramus tympanicus of the ninth cranial nerve. Anatomical descriptions of the structures of the middle ear found in the earlier literature¹ are controversial and leave considerable doubt as to whether aggregates of peripheral ganglion cells or the bodies now known as the glomus jugulare were being described. Credit for the discovery of the normal glomus jugulare should go to Guild,² who, in 1941, gave the first adequate description of these formations which are histologically identical with the carotid bodies and other nonchromaffin paragangliomas found elsewhere in the body.³

REVIEW OF LITERATURE  Four years after publication of Guild's discovery, Rosenwasser⁴ reported a tumor of the middle ear and