[A clinical study on 10 cases of cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis]

Cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis is sometimes difficult to differentiate from sarcoidosis. We treated 10 patients with cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis from April 2002 to December 2011. Their ages ranged from 42 to 78 years old (mean 63.2 years), and the male-to-female ratio was 4: 6. All patients presented to our hospital with the chief complaint of a cervical mass. All patients underwent open biopsy of the cervical lymph nodes, and 8 patients were diagnosed histopathologically as having cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis. In the remaining 2 patients, caseous necrosis could not be recognized histopathologically and they were diagnosed as having sarcoidosis. However 8 weeks later, the culture of the acid-fast bacilli turned positive, and the diagnosis was corrected to cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis. In our cases, the culture of acid-fast bacilli was positive in 6 out of 9 cases (66.7%), and TB-PCR was positive in 4 out of 9 cases (44.4%). These results show that sensitivity of individual tests is rather low. For the diagnosis of cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis, it is important to suspect this disease from the findings of the sedimentation rate, tuberculin test, and ultrasonography with fine needle aspiration cytology. On performing an open biopsy of the cervical lymph nodes in the suspected patients, it is essential to combine histopathological study, TB-PCR and the culture of the acid-fast bacilli simultaneously.