Kikuchi's Disease: Clinical Characteristics and Overview

괴사성 림프절염의 임상적 고찰

Background and Objective: Kikuchi's disease(KD) is an idiopathic, self-limited lymphadenopathy that was described as a distinctive type of necrotizing lymphadenitis affecting primarily cervical lymph nodes of young adults independently by Kikuchi and Fujimoto et al at first in 1972. The purpose of this study is a knowledge about clinicopathologic findings, many laboratory tests and differentiation of KD from other lymphadenitis due to lymphoma, systemic lupus erythematosus(SLE) and many viral disease. Materials and Methods: Thirty-four case of KD collected at Chonnam University Hospital in Kwang-Ju from 1992 through 2000 were evaluated with retrospective chart review. Results: The patients were consisted of 11 men and 23 women. All patients had tender or nontender cervical mass and fever was the most common associated symptom. The others was pain, weight loss, chills, cold sweating and headache et al. Multiple bilateral involvement of cervical lymphnodes was 25 cases(74%) and solitary involvement was 9 cases(26%). In laboratory tests, leukopenia was 12 cases(75%), elevated ESR 5 cases (34%) and elevated LDH 11 cases(69%). Conclusion: KD is necessary to differentiate from lymphoma and SLE, because of the different of therapeutic modality and prognosis. The diagnosis is established on the basis of histopathologic studies with excisional biopsy of lymph node.