Diagnostic Accuracy of Color Doppler Ultrasonography in Differentiating Benign and Malignant Cervical Lymph Nodes Keeping Histopathology as Gold Standard
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37762/jgmds.13-3.838Keywords:
Cervical Lymphadenopathy, Color Doppler, Diagnostic Accuracy, Histhopathology, Sensitivity, SpecificityAbstract
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to assess the diagnostic accuracy of Color Doppler Ultrasonography (CDUS) for differentiating benign from malignant cervical lymph nodes, with histopathological correlation.
METHODOLOGY
A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted at the Department of Radiology, MTI–Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar. A total of 235 consecutive patients with clinically suspected cervical lymphadenopathy underwent Color Doppler ultrasonography followed by histopathological confirmation, where clinically indicated. Diagnostic performance measures, including sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and diagnostic accuracy, along with their 95% confidence intervals, were calculated.
RESULTS
CDUS classified 87 (37.0%) lymph nodes as malignant and 148 (63.0%) as benign. The histopathological results showed 94 (40.0%) malignant and 141 (60.0%) benign lymph nodes. The diagnostic performance of CDUS showed 87.2% sensitivity, 96.5% specificity, 94.3% PPV, 91.9% NPV, and 92.8% diagnostic accuracy. The participants' mean age was 44.40 ± 15.65 years, with a female predominance (54.0%). Exploratory stratified analysis demonstrated numerically comparable diagnostic performance across age and gender categories; these observations were descriptive and not formally compared statistically.
CONCLUSION
CDUS demonstrated high diagnostic performance and may serve as a useful first-line imaging modality for evaluation of cervical lymphadenopathy, particularly in resource-limited settings; however, histopathological confirmation remains necessary in equivocal cases.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Jawad Ali, Mehreen Samad, Ghazala Wahid, Faryal Bashir, Muhammad Waleed khan, Kiran Zafar
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