The application of ultrasonography in evaluating cervical malignant lymph nodes

Background and purpose:Metastatic carcinoma and lymphoma are usually the causes of cervical malignant lymph nodes. This paper was aimed to investigate the different appearances of cervical malignant lymph nodes by 2 dimension and color doppler flow imaging (CDFI) and discuss the role of ultrasonography in diagnosing cervical malignant lymph nodes. Methods:Ninety-nine patients and 40 healthy people were selected as our subjects, among which 54 cases were diagnased as metastatic tumor and 45 cases as lymphoma according to pathology examination. With high frequency transducers, ultrasonography was used to document the shape of cervical lymph nodes, the ratio of long/short axis (L/S), types of echo and hilus of lymph node. CDFI features were also recorded and measured in order to analyze the parameters. Results:Compared with image of normal lymph nodes, the image of cervical malignant lymph nodes showed that the shape tended to be round and the ratio of L/S decreased. In addition, the majority of echo types of malignant lymph nodes was a low level echo and easily became fused. Meanwhile, the image of hilus of lymph node tended to disappear or shift. The lymph node of cases with metastatic tumor was shown to be either calcified or liquefied. The rate of blood flow in the artery was observed to be of high velocity and high resistive index (RI). Between metastatic tumor and lymphoma tumor case, there was significant difference in terms of ultrasonographic and CDFI features. All the above results showed that the features of malignant lymph nodes were significantly different from the normal ones. Conclusion:Ultrasonography could be regarded as one method of evaluating cervical malignant lymph nodes.