Staging of Lymphoma in the NeckĪ positive diagnosis will typically include an attempt to stage the disease (i.e., to determine how far it has progressed). Additionally, an excision is preferable to the other common option, fine needle aspiration, because it preserves the cellular structure for analysis. It is important to conduct the analysis quickly because that allows better differentiation between normal healthy cells and fast-growing cancer cells. This means that a slice of an enlarged node will be removed, intact, and will be sent to a pathologist for immediate processing. To test for lymphoma of the neck, the doctor will try to obtain an excisional biopsy of one the enlarged nodes. For example, lymphoma in the tonsils will appear as a sore throat, while a tumor in the larynx may cause hoarseness or breathing problems, and one in the sinuses will cause sinusitis. Also, specific symptoms will present depending on the area of primary involvement. These include night sweats, weight loss, and chronically low energy levels. In addition to these primary symptoms of lymphoma of the neck, there are a number of systemic symptoms that may occur in a minority of cases. NHL also tends to occur submucosally, or deeper in the tissues of the neck than things like squamous cell carcinoma. Hodgkin’s in the neck is almost exclusively limited to the lymph nodes, while NHL can be either nodal or extranodal. These swollen nodes are not usually sensitive or tender, and tend to occur in a single localized region. The most common of the symptoms of lymphoma of the neck is an enlargement of one or more lymph nodes. Signs and Symptoms of Lymphoma in the Neck Because it is a broad category of disease rather than a single, concrete disorder, head and neck lymphomas will present in a variety of ways and may have vastly different outcomes depending on location, severity, age of the patient, and other factors. The two major classifications are Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). They account for the most frequent head and neck malignancies.

Lymphoma is a cancer of the b- and t-cell lymphocytes, part of the immune system.

Lymph nodes swollen back of neck