A MORPHOLOGICAL STUDY OF TUBERCULOUS LYMPHADENOPATHY

Two hundred patients with lymphadenopathy were screened and one hundred and one patients with tuberculous lymphadenopathy were studied. Their ages ranged from 2-70 years. Maximum numbers of cases were in age groups 10-29 years. Females (69.31%) were more affected than males (30.69%). The common presenting symptoms was fever. Out of 101 patients 83 had affected cervical lymph nodes, 7 had axillary lymph nodes and 11 had multiple sites of lymph node involvement. Fluorescent staining of histopathological sections from 103 chronic granulomatous lymphadenitis gave positive results in 76 out of 103 (73.78%) cases, however Ziehl-Neelsen staining was positive only in 29 out of 103 (28.15%) cases. The yield of mycobacteria on fluorescent staining was highly significant (p<0.001) as compared to Ziehl-Neelsen staining thereby providing the superiority of fluorescent stain.