Clinical Value Of Conventional Ultrasonography Combined With Ultrasonic Elastography In Differential Diagnosis Of Benign And Malignant Cervical Atypical Lymph Nodes

Objective : Combined with conventional ultrasound to evaluate the value of ultrasonic elastography in differential diagnosis of benign and malignant cervical atypical lymph nodes.Methods: 113 cervical enlarged lymph nodes in 113 patients were studied by ultrasound,color Doppler flow imaging(CDFI)and ultrasonic elastography(UE).The biopsy was performed under the guidance of ultrasound,and the results of pathological or clinical follow-up were compared.Results:In UE examination,the strain ratio(SR)was used.When SR ? 1.5 was used as the criteria for the malignant diagnosis of cervical lymph nodes,the sensitivity,specificity and accuracy were 89.9%,79.6%and 85.8%respectively.The specificity,sensitivity,accuracy value of elastography scores were50.7%,77.3% and 61.1%.The sensitivity,specificity and accuracy of B-mode ultrasound were 59.4%,54.5% and 57.2% respectively.The sensitivity,specificity and accuracy of CDFI were 69.6%,63.6% and 67.3%,respectively.UE has higher sensitivity,accuracy and larger area under ROC curve than B-US,and the difference is statistically significant(P <0.05).UE has higher sensitivity than CDFI.The difference was statistically significant(P< 0.05),but there was no significant difference in the area under the ROC curve between the two groups.Conclusion : Conventional ultrasound combined with ultrasound elastography is superior to single elastography or conventional ultrasound in the diagnosis of benign and malignant atypical lymph nodes in the neck.