الفهرس 
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Abstract
Salivary gland diseases are ranging from inflammatory conditions to a group of benign and malignant neoplasms. Symptoms of salivary gland diseases are limited in number and generally nonspecific as patients usually complain of swelling, pain, xerostomia, foul taste, and sometimes sialorrhea.
Sialadenitis is the most common disease involving salivary glands. Inflammation can occur as the common endpoint for a wide variety of conditions. Although the inflammation is sometimes idiopathic, it is often attributable to infectious, obstructive or autoimmune conditions. chronic sialadenitis is a localized condition of the salivary gland characterized by recurrent bouts of acute sialadenitis or incomplete resolution of an acute process (with subsequent glandular destruction).
The chronic inflammatory process stimulates alterations in salivary chemistry and enzyme. Recurrent inflammatory reactions result in progressive acinar destruction, accompanied by a lymphocytic infiltrate, with fibrous replacement and sialectasis.
Patients with chronic sialadenitis should be evaluated with a history, physical examination, and possibly imaging. Sialography, plain film radiography, CT, CBCT, MRI, US and scintigraphy, can play an important role in clarifying the etiology of such nonspecific symptoms, the extent of glandular involvement, and the effect on the adjacent surrounding structure.
US has several qualities making it an ideal first-line technique for salivary gland evaluation, including wide availability, low cost, noninvasiveness, easy reproducibility and real-time assessment. It allows the construction of morphological images of organs, but lacks a fundamental and quantitative information on tissue elastic properties. Elastography is thought to add valuable information about the tissue stiffness.
The aim of this study was to evaluate major salivary glands in patients with chronic inflammatory conditions by sono-elastography.
Twenty-one patients with chronic inflammatory conditions of parotid or submandibular gland were included in this study; all patients were selected from clinic of Minia University hospital and hospital of Faculty of Dentistry, Minia University. The patients were of both sexes and their ages ranged from 6 to 65 years old, with mean age of 47.6 years old. All cases were subjected to history taking, thorough clinical examination and radiographic imaging using conventional ultrasonography and strain and shear wave elastography. Another twenty-one healthy patients free from any diseases aged (9– 65) years, mean (46.9) years, constituted the control group.
The result of this study showed that there was statistically significance difference in strain ratio between cases and control group. As well as, cases showed statistically significantly higher shear wave velocity than control group.
Elastography may be potentially useful for diagnosis of chronic inflammatory disorders of salivary glands but additional studies with large sample size are warranted.