What should I do if my cervical lymph node tuberculosis becomes suppurative? It turns out that this treatment is the most effective

Cervical lymphadenopathy is a common disease in daily life. It has the characteristics of a wide range of incidence and great harm to the human body, so it has attracted much attention. So what should you do if your cervical lymph node tuberculosis becomes purulent? In fact, surgical treatment is particularly effective for cervical lymph node tuberculosis that has become purulent.

Cervical tuberculosis is one of the more common types of human tuberculosis and can occur at any age. It is commonly known as "rat sore" and is often found in the inner and outer sides of the sternocleidomastoid muscles of the neck or deep in the neck muscle layer. It can also occur in the submandibular, armpit, groin, etc. From 1998 to 2000, we treated 82 patients with liquefaction necrosis of cervical lymphadenopathy. All of them were cured in one operation. The following is a report on our experience:

1 Clinical Data

1.1 General information: There were 82 patients, including 52 males and 30 females. The oldest patient was 73 years old and the youngest patient was 3 months old. The average age was 28 years old. The longest course of disease was 14 years and the shortest was 15 days, with an average illness duration of 1 year and 3 months. There were 49 cases of simple caseous necrosis, 47 cases of caseous necrosis with abscess formation, and 6 cases of fistula that did not heal for a long time or formed local tuberculosis abscess.

1.2 Treatment effect: All 82 patients in this group underwent a one-time surgical approach. The previous method of local incision and drainage, followed by slow healing, was changed to thorough debridement and incision suturing. Postoperatively, anti-inflammatory and anti-tuberculosis drugs were used for comprehensive treatment. The incisions of 82 patients healed in the first stage, with no case of non-healing or recurrence of local abscess. The sutures were removed after an average of 7-9 days.

2 Discussion

For those lymph nodes that have become purulent and have formed cystic masses, they should not be incised and drained, and should be allowed to heal slowly. Instead, the principle of sterility should be followed, the surgical area should be routinely disinfected, and under local anesthesia, the skin layers should be incised according to clinical needs. The abscess capsule should be dissected layer by layer along the surface, and the capsule should be kept intact as much as possible. Care should be taken not to rupture the abscess wall to prevent pus from contaminating normal tissue. Routine local lymph node dissection was performed for patients with caseous necrosis. For cases of caseous necrosis accompanied by tuberculous liquefaction, the lymph node capsule can be dissected and the surrounding lymph nodes can be cleared. For tuberculous fistulas, the fistula should be opened first, the liquefied necrotic tissue should be removed, and then the fistula wall should be peeled off one by one. Regardless of the type of lesion, as long as strict aseptic operation is performed and the wound is cleaned properly, the incision can achieve the effect of primary healing.