Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

sopharyngeal carcinoma are common in Asians and are often indistinguishable clinically. Be-cause their treatment depends on prompt diagnosis, we undertook this study to evaluate if power Doppler sonography could distinguish these two pathologic abnormalities. The intran-odal vascular appearances of tuberculous neck nodes are compared with benign reactive neck nodes and metastatic nodes from nasopharyngeal carcinoma. METHODS: The appearances of power Doppler sonograms of 42 tuberculous nodes were compared with 28 metastatic nodes from nasopharyngeal carcinoma and 27 benign reactive nodes. The intranodal distribution of vessels and the intranodal vascular resistance of vessels were compared among these three groups. All examinations were performed by the same son-ologist (A.A.), who had more than 3 years ’ scanning experience, and all data analysis was performed by the same investigator (M.Y.). RESULTS: The intranodal vascular distribution in tuberculous nodes was varied and sim-ulated both benign and malignant disease. Avascularity of nodes and displacement of hilar vascularity were frequent in tuberculous nodes. Metastatic nodes from nasopharyngeal carci-noma (resistive index [RI], 0.8160.09; pulsatile index [PI], 1.9160.81) had a higher vascula