Extrapulmonary tuberculosis and cervical lymphadenopathy

Aim: to find the incidence of tuberculous lymphadenitis in patients with cervical lymphadenopathy in low socio economic group at outskirts of lahore. methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted at the department of pathology with collaborationof department of surgery at avicenna medical college and hospital which is situated at outskirt of lahore cannt.the study was conducted,from june,2012 to april 2015.one hundred and ten patients were included with swelling/mass in neck according to criteria laid down in proforma. fine needle aspiration cytology (fnac) procedure was used to diagnose pathological lesions allinformation's gathered were entered onprearranged proforma and statistical analysis was done by spss version 11. results: the study includes 110 cases with enlarged cervical lymph nodes,68(61.81%) females and 42(38.18%) males. in this study age of patients varies from 10-65 years with a mean of 33.5±13.4 years. all of patients were from lower income strata. the main complaints of these patients were fever,weight loss and generalized weakness. tuberculosis was the predominant diagnosis in enlarged cervical lymph nodes,in 80 patients (72.54%),while reactive hyperplastic lymphadenopathy 11(10%) was the next common finding. non hodgkin lymphoma was diagnosed in 2(1.81%).metastasis was found in 4(3.63%) patients. rare disease diagnosed was 1(0.99%) case of kikuchi's disease. twelve cases were non diagnostic in fnac. conclusion: chronic granulomatous cervical lymphadenitis (tuberculous) is a common extra pulmonary illness in pakistan. the poor youngfemales and children of our society are the common victims of this disease. because of this fact any patient with cervical lymphadenopathy for long duration may be suspected for having tuberculosis and must be ruled out for this disease by fnac.