Cervical Lymph Nodes: A Hotbed For Metastasis in Malignancy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to find semblance between cervical lymph node metastasis and various malignancies. Objective was to estimate the incidence of neck node metastasis (NNM) from malignancies arising from infraclavicular region reported at a tertiary cancer centre over 10 years. Retrospective data was obtained from Hospital Management Software system from March 2012 to March 2017. 4000 patients were analysed and based on inclusion and exclusion criteria 68 patients were identified with clinically palpable and/or enlarged cervical lymph nodes. Results 41.7% patients had lung as a primary malignancy, 17.64% had breast carcinoma, 20.58% patients were with head and neck malignancy other than oral cavity malignancy, 7.3% of patients had primary malignancy in cervix. 2.94% patients had endometrial malignancy and renal malignancy each. Primary malignancies of gall bladder, pancreas, skin, prostate and vagina constituted 1.47% for each type. Conclusion understanding the pertinence of cervical lymph nodes specially supraclavicular lymph nodes with different primary tumor sites enables to plan interdisciplinary management of patients and also to correlate with the prognosis of patient.

Keywords: Distant primary; Lymphatics; Metastasis; Neck node.

Fig. 1

Overall incidence of distribution of distant primary with neck node metastasis

Fig. 2

Bar diagram showing distribution of cervical node involvement from distant primary sites