Pathologic etiology and predictors of malignancy in children with cervical lymphadenopathy

Cervical lymphadenopathy in children is a common disease entity that is accompanied by a variety of processes,ranging from benign disease to malignancy.Although the cause of cer-vical lymphadenopathy in children is often benign[1-4],the presence of enlarged lymph nodes can cause anxiety to parents because of its association with malignancy.Biopsy should be considered for the histologic diagnosis of persistent or unex-plained cervical lymphadenopathy in children.However,biopsy is an invasive examination method,and it is difficult to clinically determine whether biopsy is needed in children with unexplained cervical lymphadenopathy.Therefore,clini-cians should be aware of the differential diagnosis of lymph node enlargement in children and should identify situations in which malignancy may be suspected.In this study,we aimed to identify the etiology of pediatric cervical lymphadenopathy using biopsy and to analyze the risk factors associated with malignancy in children with cervical lymphadenopathy.