[Histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis: Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease. Apropos of 6 cases]

Necrotizing Histiocytic Lymphadenitis or Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease is a benign process of lymphatic system that consists of lymphadenopathy which may be accompanied by fever, rash and some haematological alterations as anaemia. It affects usually young people, mostly women. Although it is more frequent in Oriental countries, there have been some notices about this disease in Europe recently. We present six patients that have been diagnosed in our Hospital between 1986 and 1996. All presented as cervical masses and fever. The diagnostic procedure was the lymph node biopsy, which showed the typical pathology of this disease: some foci of necrosis which contained plasmocytoides cells and atypical lymphocytes. It is also suggestive of this entity the absence of polymorphonuclear cells. Then, the diagnosis of the Necrotizing Histiocytic Lymphadenitis is made by the histology. The treatment is symptomatic. In all cases the evolution is the whole remission of symptoms. In our patients the illness was self-limited and none presented any other symptom. Our proposal with this article is to remind the clinicians of this entity when people ask for cervical masses and fever.