The incidence of tuberculosis patients is high in Japan compared with the other developed countries. The ratio of extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients, for example cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis, tends to increase. In otolaryngology, the number of tuberculosis patients (especially those with cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis) is high and followed by pleuritis patients in extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Although otolaryngologists often diagnose extrapulmonary tuberculosis, it is difficult for them to diagnose appropriately because of various clinical features. Thus, we examined and presented the clinical history of 9 cases of tuberculosis patients in our Otolaryngology department and added a review of the related literature. We diagnosed 9 patients as having cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis from April 2002 to December 2012. They were 30 to 90 years old (mean 57.9 years old), and the male/female ratio was 3 : 6. Five cases were diagnosed as the abscess types and 4 were the swelling types based on the imaging analysis of cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis. Four cases showed multiple lymphadenopathy and 5 showed a solitary involvement. Five sputum and 7 gastric fluid cultures were all negative, whereas 4 QuantiFERON tests were all positive. Fine-needle aspiration cytology was performed in 8 patients, and epithelioid cells were seen in 4 cases. Because tuberculosis presents various clinical features, if we obtained the atypical findings from those patients, it is important in the first instance to suspect tuberculosis. Based on the viewpoint for preventing the spread of infection, we should perform cellular analysis using ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration after sufficient assessment of the spreading risk by sputum, gastric fluid culture and TB-PCR and QuantiFERON tests, and if a diagnosis remains difficult, the lymph node open biopsy need to be considered.
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