Preliminary study of the malignant risk classification system for cervical lymph node / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To construct preliminarily the malignant risk classification system for the cervical lymph node.Methods:A total of 301 patients with cervical lymphadenopathy were collected in this prospective study from Union Hospital, Fujian Medical University from July 2018 to December 2019. The ultrasonographic features(including the short diameter, ratio of long to short diameters(L/S), margin, border, matting, echogenic hilum, echogenicity, gross necrosis, microcalcification, hyperechoic area, flow type, vascular distribution), history of malignancy, inflammation performance of the neck and history of tuberculosis were analyzed. A score was assigned for each significant index related to benign/malignant lymph nodes by a Logistic regression analysis. The classification of the malignant risk was determined on the basis of the scores.Results:The factors significantly associated with the malignant lymph nodes were enlargement of the short diameter, L/S<2, microcalcification, hyperechoic area, irregular margin, matting, abnormal flow pattern, malignancy history. While the factors related to the benign were the inflammation performance and the fuzzy boundary. The risk of malignancy increased as the score of lymph node increased. The malignant risk of lymph node according to the classification system was as follows category 1, 7.30%; category 2a, 35.00%; category 2b, 69.30%; category 2c, 91.50%; and category 3, 99.05%. The area under the ROC curve of the system was 0.913.Conclusions:The system has great potential of clinical application to assess the risk of malignancy in cervical lymph nodes.