A Clinicopathological study on Cervical Lymphadenopathy

Background: Cervical lymphadenopathy can be a confounding problem in surgical practice. The analysis of cervical lymphadenopathy is never straightforward and the difficulty is compounded by the differential diagnoses that include several diseases that resemble each other. Clinical evaluation, aspiration cytology, and open biopsy are some of the methods available for this purpose. Aim: To study the prevalence of the cervical lymphadenopathy in respect to age, sex, to study about the various clinical presentation of cervical lymphadenopathy, to correlate the pathological findings with the clinical diagnosis and to study the role of FNAC by correlating with confirmed biopsy report. Materials and methods: 75 patients with cervical lymphadenopathy were selected from the General Surgery OPD of Tirunelveli medical college. They were subjected to FNAC and excision biopsy of the nodes after a thorough history and clinical examination. The results were tabulated and analyzed. Results: The most common diagnosis was Tuberculous lymphadenitis (67%) followed by reactive (9%) and non-specific lymphadenitis (9%) with malignant secondaries (11%) and lymphomas (4%). There was a slight male preponderance (57.3%) The most common presenting age groups were between 31 to 40 years followed by 21 to 30 years. The most common presenting symptom was neck swelling (88%) followed by fever (37.3%) and Loss of weight (18.7%). Conclusion: Tuberculous lymphadenopathy continues to be the major reason for cervical lymphadenopathy with malignancy as an important differential diagnosis. FNAC is a versatile diagnostic tool and one of the least invasive tests in the workup of cervical lymphadenopathy. It is very accurate in diagnosing malignancy and lymphomas and reasonably so in diagnosing tuberculosis.