Lali Krishnan Rajan1, Priya Venugopaladas Saraswathy2, Sheela Kizhuvelil Mohammed Ali3, Deepthi Raj Madambithara Lekshmi4
BACKGROUND
Lymphadenopathy is a common clinical condition and biopsies are usually
undertaken to determine the cause of nodal enlargement, which may be neoplastic
or non-neoplastic. The neoplastic disorders are categorized into haematolymphoid
malignancies and metastasis, while the causes of non-neoplastic
lymphadenopathy are diverse. This study was undertaken to determine the
histopathological spectrum in lymph node biopsies.
METHODS
This was a descriptive study of 357 cases of histologically diagnosed peripheral
lymph node biopsies in the Department of Pathology, Govt. Medical College,
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, S. India conducted from January 2019 to December
2019. Treated cases of malignancies were excluded.
RESULTS
The non-neoplastic lesions were more common accounting for 67.2 % (240 cases)
which included 40.3 % (144 cases) of non-specific reactive lymphoid hyperplasia,
3.9 % (14 cases) of other specific lymphoid hyperplasia, 16.2 % (58 cases) of
tuberculous lymphadenitis, 6.7 % (24 cases) of other granulomatous lesions.
Neoplastic lesions accounted for 32.8 % (117 cases) and included 16.2 % (58
cases) of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 3.9 % (14 cases) of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and
12.6 % (45 cases) of metastatic lesions.
CONCLUSIONS
Lymph node biopsy plays an important role in establishing the cause of
lymphadenopathy. Among the biopsied nodes, reactive follicular hyperplasia was
the most common (40.3 %) followed by Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and tuberculous
lymphadenitis (16.2 % each) and metastasis (12.6 %).
