PERIPHERAL LYMPH GLANDS;

Background: Enlarged lymph glands almost always represent a local or systemicdisease that may be benign or malignant. We see many patients including the referred onesin our OPD clinic and subsequently do the excision of quite a big proportion of the enlargedglands especially the cervical glands. Study Design: Descriptive study. Setting: Retrospectby reviewing the operative and histopathology department of King Edward Medical University.Period: April 2016 to April 2017. Methods: We will analyse the record of 121 patients who hadperipheral lymph gland enlargement and presented to us. Results: Ours results show that themean age of our patients was 25.03±18.06 years. We found that 40% of our patients had adefinitive diagnosis from the histopathology of excised lymph nodes while 35.5% of the patientshad reactive hyperplasia and 25% of the patients had inconclusive results and we were unableto help them. Conclusion: Our results conclude that the lymph nodes are a very good source ofgetting the diagnosis especially the cervical lymph nodes with a diagnostic yield of 76.4% andwe may need to have a more robust criteria for excising the peripheral lymph glands in order toimprove the diagnostic yield from 40%.