Nadar Khan, Naseem-ul Haq, Zahid Islam, Arshad Saeed Awan, Ashfaq-ur Ihman, Niamat Ullah.
Frequency of Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis in patients with Cervical Lymphadenopathy.
Pak J Med Health Sci Jan ;7(1):95-9.

Objective: To determine the frequency of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis in patient who are having cervical lymph node enlargement. Patients and methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Ear, Nose, Throat, Head and Neck surgery, Post Graduate Medical Institute Lady reading Hospital Peshawar between March 2010 to March 2011. The study includes one hundred and one patients with enlarged cervical lymph nodes fulfilling the inclusion criteria. Results: Our study included 101 cases with cervical lymphadenopathy fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria. There were 63 female and 38 male patients, with female: male ratio of 1.65:1.The age of the patients ranged from 3-67 years with mean age of 32.56±13.49 years. These patients belonged to various group of life and most of them were from lower socioeconomic stratum of life. Majority of the patients (76.23%) having low body mass index. The main complaint of these patients was cervical lymphadenopathy (100%) with duration from 1 month to 12 months with average of 4.5 months duration. The size of the lymph node ranged from 2-7.2 cm with mean 4.40±1.93 cm. In this study tuberculosis in cervical lymph nodes was diagnosed in 87 cases (86.13%) by fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC), in 8 cases (7.92%) incisional biopsy and in 6 cases (5.94%) excisional biopsy was performed to get final diagnosis. The extrapulmonary tuberculosis was the commonest diagnosis in cervical lymphadenopathy accounting 75.24%. The next common finding was reactive hyperplastic lymphadenopathy in 11 cases (10.89%). In 6 cases (5.94%) there were metastatic lymph nodes. Some rare diseases diagnosed in cervical lymph nodes were Hodgkin’s disease (2.97%). Conclusion: Extrapulmonary TB is the commonest cause of cervical lymph node enlargement.

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