Incidence and predictors of malignancy in children with persistent cervical lymphadenopathy.

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the clinical and histopathologic aspects of persistent cervical lymphadenopathies in children.

Methods: This retrospective study included 98 children who underwent surgical excision for persistently swollen cervical lymph nodes between 2001 and 2013. Lymph nodes greater than 1.5 cm that persisted for more than 4 weeks and were unresponsive to an initial antibiotic treatment were considered "persistent". The largest lymph node with an abnormal ultrasonographic appearance was selected for surgical biopsy. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to the histopathologic outcome: benign or malignant.

Results: No significant differences were found between the groups regarding the mean size and mean duration of the swollen cervical lymph nodes (p = 0.147 and p = 0.446, respectively). The area under the ROC curve was 0.567 (95% confidence interval = 0.463-0.667, p = 0.259) for lymph node size and 0.507 (95% confidence interval = 0.404-0.609, p = 0.909) for the duration of the cervical lymphadenopathy. There was no significant difference in the presence of B symptoms between the two groups (p = 0.519). No significant difference was found between benign and malignant groups regarding bilaterality (p=0.913).

Conclusions: The findings of our study demonstrated that the size and duration of cervical lymphadenopathy, bilateral or unilateral involvement and the presence or absence of B symptoms are not indicators of malignancy. We found a high incidence of malignancy in pediatric cervical lymphadenopathy cases in contrast to other current studies.