A Clinical Consideration of Necrotizing Lymphadenitis

괴사성 림프절염에 대한 임상적 고찰

Background and Objectives： Necrotizing lymphadenitis or Kikuchi's disease is characterized by cervical lymphadenopathy of unknown etiology with unique histologic findings in young female patients. The importance of this disease lies in the fact that it can be easily misdiagnosed as malignant lymphoma, hence, clinicians need to aware of this disease entity. The purpose of this study is to report the clinicopathologic findings, radiographic findings, and many laboratory tests in order to contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of necrotizing lymphadenitis. Materials and Methods： We evaluated 31 patients, who were diagnosed as necrotizing lymphadenitis by excisional biopsy or fine needle aspiration cytology or ultrasound guided 18G cutting needle biopsy, retrospectively. Result : The median age was 24.8 years (range 12 to 43 years) and the male to female ratio was 1 : 2.4(9：22), with 14 females (45.1%) under 30 years. The common chief complaints were neck mass, easy fatigue and fever. Lymph node enlargement was limited to the cervical area in most cases (28cases : 90.3%). The involved lymph nodes were usually multiple (20cases : 64.5%), unilateral (26cases 83.9%) and small sized. Leukopenia (19cases : 61.3%) and elevation of ESR (18cases : 58.1%) appeared most frequently in the abnormal laboratory data. These symptoms will be gone spontaneoulsy without any specific treatment in several weeks or months. Conclusion : We should consider open biopsy or fine needle aspiration cytology or ultrasound guided cutting needle biopsy with lymph node in patients who have cervical lymphadenopathy with easy fatigue and fever, especially young women to exclude other conditions such as malignant lymphoma and tuberculosis, etc.