I have seen that some people were diagnosed with Low Grade Mucoepidermic Carcinoma and in most cases they only needed one surgery. I have some questions and I wish someone could help me. Sorry if my questions seems stupid but I am afraid to develop something again. My doctor mentioned me that this kind of cancer is very "soft" compared to others but as you can read I am still concerned to develop a new one somewhere else.

1. What is the likelihood for a Low Grade MEC to show again somewhere else? The Low Grade MEC tends to create more aggresive type of cancers like intermediate or High Degree
2. If I had low grade MEC will my body and/or mouth be more suitable to develop cancer again??
3. Do you know if the HPV develop Low Grade MEC ??
4. Do you know about people that survived to low grade MEC and after a long long time they never had anything else.

Mauricio Diaz
Mexico City. Low Grade Mucoepidermic Cancer in the soft palette. Diagnosed 02/19/2011. It was removed in 03/01/2011 with margins clear at Hospital Angeles in Mexico City.

Hi and welcome - sorry you have to be here, and sorry I can't really answer any of your questions - ill leave that to the knowledgeable in the group. I wanted to say I'm glad your surgery went well. Best of luck and take care.

Hi Mauricio!

Welcome to OCF. I was first diagnosed with low grade MEC with two different initial biopsies but with the removal of the tumor during surgery, it was reclassified as HIGH grade MEC.

I can't answer your questions with certainty because I'm not a doctor but I do know that drs told me that this was the better of the Head and Neck cancer types to get. I was also told that it's highly unlikely for HPV to be a culprit but with much persistance after a year of asking, they finally caved in and will test my path slides.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions!

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!