Palliative chemotherapy in patients with salivary gland neoplasms and preliminary reports of 2 recent phase II studies with trastuzumab and gemcitabine.

Salivary gland malignancies are a diverse group of neoplasms. Patients are usually treated with surgery followed by adjuvant radiation therapy. Those presenting with recurrent or metastatic disease have limited treatment options for these patients and discuss the results of 2 recent studies that used trastuzumab and gemcitabine as single agents in patients with incurable disease.