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20 year old, reactive lymph node in neck

Hello,

I am a 20 year old female, healthy other an underactive thyroid diagnosed May 2010.  About a month ago I noticed a lump in my thyroid region.  To make a long story short, I went through testing and bouncing back between thyroid nodule and parathyroid adenoma only to determine it was a reactive lymph node.  It is .75 cm in size and located posterior and inferior to the left side of the thyroid.  The biopsy showed that the lymph node is reactive.  Submental nodes appeared to be inflamed on a CT scan, but were only a few millimeters in size.

Should I be worried?  I was on a Z Pack for 5 days and it did not decrease in size at all. The doctor said I can remove it now or wait two months to see if it stays.
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534785 tn?1329592208
Hashimoto's can cause swollen lymph nodes in the cervical region, so I assume hypothyroidism, in general, can also cause swollen lymph nodes. I'm dealing with something similar (hypothyroidism + swollen nodes), except my tonsils are asymmetrically enlarged, meaning that they could be the cause of my swollen neck nodes.
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Avatar universal
Thank you for your response.

The surgeon did agree to removing the node.  There is no talk about it helping with hypothyroidism, in fact he doesn't believe the two are related at all.  The report said there were lymphoid cells with an abundance of tangible body macrophages- something along those lines.  The first thing that the report mentioned, though, was that an error occurred with the partial air drying of the specimen... I guess it wasn't too conclusive?  Inflammatory lymphadenopathy was what was suspected, nonetheless.

I had a pre-op appointment, the first time I'd seen the doctor in about 2-3 weeks.  I told him it felt like it had gotten larger and he confirmed that it had upon palpation.  He still says he is not concerned, though.  All I keep hearing is "growth is bad"- what else would cause the lymph node to get larger?  At the same time that it got larger, it was no longer tender. Not sure if that matters.

Thank you so much for your response.
Helpful - 0
1081992 tn?1389903637
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hi, my first thought was to wonder why the doctor would so readily agree to a resection, if there were no abnormal cells found in the needle biopsy and the report says reactive hyperplasia.

The node is not really large. IIRC, the dividing line for worry used to be 1 cm, now it's 1 inch. You have nearby inflammation, which seems to support a diagnosis of infection.

It's not an innocuous area for surgery, either. Did a surgeon also agree to the resection? Is there some talk that removing the node might somehow help out with the hypoT - evebn though the hypoT came first?

The azithromax is not guaranteed to work an every type of bacteria. Plus your infection might be virus anyway. Or theoretically parasite or fungus.

If it were me, I would wait to see what happens.

Anyway, those are my guesses. Good luck.



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