In recent years, the otologic world has been fascinated by the appearance of reports describing various aspects of the glomus jugulare tumor. Guild,1 in 1941, first described small glomus-like structures in the adventitia of the jugular bulb. In 1945, Rosenwasser2 described a tumor which he felt was a carotid body tumor of the middle ear and mastoid, which histologically was described as a glomus jugulare tumor. This was the first of these tumors to be reported as such in the literature.
1953, Guild3 elaborated on his earlier description and indicated that "glomus jugularae" may arise in places other than the jugular bulb area. After Rosenwasser's paper in 1945, other observers reported cases of the same type and called them by other names such as chemodectoma, nonchromaffin paraganglioma, and glomus jugulare tumor. This has produced a certain amount of confusion as to nomenclature and classification. The literature on