Abstract

Objective: to assess the relationship between routine blood values recorded before fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and final diagnosis in patients whose diagnoses could not be confirmed with FNAB, necessitating surgical excisional biopsy (SEB) as a second invasive procedure.
Method: The data of patients who could not be diagnosed via FNAB and underwent SEB of the cervical lymph node between March 2014 and March 2019 in the Otolaryngology Department of a research hospital were evaluated retrospectively. According to the definitive diagnosis determined by SEB, the cases were divided into 3 groups as follows: (1) benign, (2) other malignancies, (3) lymphoma
Results: The frequency of males in the other malignancies group was significantly higher compared to the other two groups (p = 0.007). Compared to the other two groups, C-reactive protein levels were statistically significantly lower in the benign group (p = 0.001). Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) in the lymphoma group was significantly higher than the other groups (p 35.5 (AUC = 0.784, 95%CI: 0.708–0.861, p

Key words: Lymphoma; erythrocyte sedimentation rate; c-reactive protein; fine-needle aspiration biopsy