Abstract

A retrospective morphological study was conducted on 1677 lymph nodes which were removed surgically under the diagnosis of gastric carcinoma, breast carcinoma, colonic carcinoma, chronic gastric ulcer, and superficial lymph nodes nuder the diagnosis of reactive follicular hyperplasia at Chosun University Hospital during a period of 5 years from 1980 to 1984. The hematoxylin and eosin stained sections were examined to evaluate for any vascular changes. In selected cases further levels were prepared from the paraffin blocks for Gomori's reticulin stain. The vascular abnormalities were divided into 3 groups, such as hemangiomatoid, pan-nodal vasodilatation and miscellaneous types. The miscellaneous type included the proliferation of smooth muscle which encircled numerous small hilar arteries and veins. The results obtained were as follows: 1) The hemangiomatoid lesions were localized lesions which appeared to be associated with local malignancy, but infrequent in incidence. 2) A more frequent vascular abnormality was pan-nodal vasodilatation, which tend to affect many nodes in a single group and is relatively associated with chronic gastric ulcer. 3) Miscellaneous lesion was nonspecific and appeared both local malignancy and chronic inflammation. 4) All three vascular reactions were somewhat more frequent in female than male.