The Role of Fine-needle Aspiration Cytology in Guiding Clinicians for Lymphadenopathy

Lymphadenopathy is a very common, routinely observed clinical finding which may be caused by a variety of pathological conditions, either a primary lymph node pathology or an underlying systemic disease. Fine-needle aspiration is a simple cost-effective diagnostic tool to screen these lesions, to enhance our knowledge, to understand lymph node pathology, as well as to assist clinicians for an effective management. The aim of our study was to evaluate the patterns of pathological lesions on lymph node cytology and also to assess any particular trend of diseases in comparison with demographic variables, lymph node size, and consistency in this geographic area. In this retrospective study, we studied the reports of 131 lymph node cytology samples collected over a duration of 1 year. All parameters were entered in the Excel sheet and were analyzed for descriptive statistics. The mean age of the patients was 32 years. Reactive lymphadenitis was the most common (42%) pathology, followed by tubercular lymphadenitis, metastatic lymph nodes, and lymphomas. Infectious or inflammatory lesions were noted in younger age groups, whereas malignancies were prominent in elderly patients. This study threw light on diseases, whether infectious, inflammatory, or lymphoproliferative in etiology, which presented with lymphadenopathy in this coastal area and also unveiled the patterns of metastatic lymph nodes, their primary site, and predilection for a particular nodal site.