Abstract：Objective: Comparing with conventional ultrasound, to validate the value of ultrasound elastography(UE) in differentiating benign and malignant cervical lymph node(LN). Methods: B-mode ultrasound(B-US), color Doppler flow image(CDFI) and UE were performed for 99 lymph nodes of 74 patients and compared with final histological pathology obtained by ultrasound guided core needle biopsy. Results: With the cutoff point of strain ratio(SR) ≥1.78 for malignancy, UE was the most valuable in differential diagnosis of benign and malignant cervical lymph nodes. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were 98.3%，65.9% and 84.8%. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy of B-US and CDFI were 55.2%, 82.9%, 66.7% and 72.4%, 75.6%, 73.7%. Compared with B-US, the sensitivity, accuracy and area under the ROC curve(AUC) of UE were statistically higher. Compared with CDFI, UE had a statistically higher sensitivity, but not the AUC. Conclusion: SR with the cutoff point of 1.78 is better than B-US in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant cervical lymph nodes. As conventional ultrasound, UE is expected to be an important technique in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant cervical lymph nodes.
2012, Vol. 23 
