Suppurative cervical adenopathy and pharyngeal mass due to tularemia unresponsive to medical treatment

Abstract

Tularemia is a zoonotic disease caused by Francisella tularensis. Tularemia presents with various clinical forms, such as ulceroglandular, glandular, oculoglandular, oropharyngeal, pneumonic, and typhoidal tularemia forms. As an intracellular pathogen, F. tularensis causes granulomatous and suppurative lesions especially in the affected regional lymph nodes and various organs. Tularemia is seen most commonly in the Black Sea and Marmara regions of Turkey. Herein, we describe a girl with tularemia who presented with right cervical lymphadenopathy and left nasopharyngeal mass. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of tularemia with deep neck infection and also the first tularemia case from Corum, a city in the central Anatolian region of Turkey.