Hi Mauricio,

It sounds like we have very similar situations. I had my surgery for low grade MEC almost 8 weeks ago. My tumor was in the soft palate and was originally removed by an oral surgeon. The dx came back and I decided to go to Hopkins for the next surgery. We got clear margins on the table and all seems to be ok and my hole is almost completely healed.

I can only give you my opinion from what I understand from my surgeon at Hopkins. He explained to me that he has only seen one case with my type of low grade MEC in the same location come back. It took 14 years to come back and it came back in a lymph node in the neck. He is optimistic that recurrence is rare, but says it would irrational to think that I wouldn't need to be monitored for many years.

It sounds like he will want to see me once a year for a "checkup". He says that unfortunately scans don't really do much as it's hard to see things in the palate area on the scans. Statistically, my understanding is that recurrence for low grade MEC is low.

It sounds like we were both lucky to have caught the MEC when we did!