Mesenteric Lymph 
Nodes in Children with Abdominal Pain on Ultrasound Scans

Keimyung Medical Journal 2003;22(Suppl):66-72.

Mesenteric Lymph Nodes in Children with Abdominal Pain on Ultrasound Scans

복통 환아의 초음파검사에서 관찰되는 장간막 림프절

이희정; 김갑철; 김영환; 손철호; 백승국; 이성문; 서수지

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical significance of mesenteric lymph nodes in children presented with abdominal pain by using ultra sonography (US); focusing on benign diseases. We prospectively performed abdominal US of 1442 children (74 boys and 68 girls; Mean age; 6 years and 5 months) during recent one year. The children investigated were divided into abdominal pain (n=91) and non-pain (n=51) groups. We recorded the number of lymph nodes larger than 1cm in diameter; and also reviewed the medical records of the patients; focusing on the final clinical diagnosis and the WBC counts within 2 days of US scans. We analyzed the statistical significance of differences in the number of enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes between the pain and non-pain groups and between infectious and non-infectious diseases; and evaluated a correlation between the number of mesenteric lymph nodes and WBC counts. The pain group consisted of mesenteric lymphadenitis (12); enteritis (9); non-abdominal infectious diseases (6) and non-specific abdominal pain (64). The non-pain group consisted of urinary tract infection (17); Kawasaki disease (7); cervical lymphadenitis (8); chronic hepatitis (3); non-recurrent tumor follow-up (7); and others (19). No statistically significant difference in mean numbers of mesenteric lymph nodes was found between the pain (3.0) and non-pain (4.02) groups. The infectious disease (4.96) revealed significantly increased numbers of mesenteric lymph nodes; compared with the non-infectious diseases (2.46). Statistically significant correlation was present between the number of mesenteric lymph nodes and WBC counts. Numbers of mesenteric lymph nodes in abdominal US showed poor correlation to the presence or absence of abdominal pain in children. However; numbers of mesenteric lymph nodes tended to be related to frequency and increase of infectious diseases in the patients with leukocytosis.

Key Words: Abdominal pain, Children, Mesenteric lymph node