Tuberculosis In Children: Diagnosis Of A Case Involving Isolated Lymphadenitis

Tuberculosis is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases in the world and it constitutes a major public health problem in developing countries. We here report a clinical case of pediatric isolated lymph node tuberculosis diagnosed in a regional hospital in Senegal. It involved a boy of seven years of age whose medical history was otherwise normal. He had been admitted for a symptomatology that had progressed over the past four months, comprising evening and nocturnal fever with night sweats, general asthenia, non-selective anorexia, and an unquantified progressive weight loss. At admission, he exhibited an impaired overall condition, clinical anemia, severe malnutrition with a body weight of 17.8 kg, a height of 119cm corresponding to a BMI of 12.7 kg/m2 and a BMI-for-age value of -3 SD. He exhibited hard, more or less mobile, confluent, largely insensitive, bilateral, cervical macro-adenopathies, with normal looking skin in the beginning and then secondary fistulization on the right with areas of necrosis and frank pus. Anatomical pathology examination of the cervical lymph node biopsy indicated a tuberculoid granuloma. He had received an anti-tuberculosis treatment according to the national protocol. There was a favorable change after six months of treatment, with regression of the adenopathies and a weight gain of 5 kg. Keywords: Tuberculosis; Lymph node; Child; Anatomical pathology; Senega