Surgical lymph node biopsies in a rural Ethiopian hospital: histopathologic diagnoses and clinical characteristics.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the clinical features and histological diagnoses of patients with lymphadenopathy in a rural general hospital. BACKGROUND: Gambo Rural General Hospital, located between the Arsi and East Shoa regions, 250 km south of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and the Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the pathology examination carried out between December 2003 and July 2005. METHOD: Retrospective cross-sectional survey. RESULTS: 308 patients with enlarged superficial lymph nodes with surgical lymph node excision. The most common diagnoses were tuberculosis lymphadenitis (TB-L) (74.4%), followed by non-specific reactive lymphadenitis (10.2%), malignant secondary lymphadenopathy (7.5%), and lymphomas (7.1%). In the multivariate analysis, TB-L was significantly associated with previous antibiotic treatment for more than 20 days (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 3.70; 95% CI: 1.43-9.59) (p = 0.007), and female sex (OR: 2.07; 95% CI: 1.09-3.9). Non-specific reactive lymphadenitis was significantly associated with paediatric cases (aOR: 4.42; 95% CI: 1.78-10.87) (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: These results show that tuberculosis is a major problem in this area.