[Nasopharyngeal tuberculosis: report 2 cases and review of the literature].

Nasopharyngeal tuberculosis is a noteworthy disease and it should be differentiated from with nasopharyngeal carcinoma,especially in southern China,because of both having similar clinical presentations such as cervical lymph node enlargement and lesions in nasopharynx. Here we report 2 middle-aged patients of nasopharyngeal tuberculosis;between them,one was male, another was female. They came to hospital with the symptoms of pharyngeal pain and neck node, respectively. The former patient was accompanied by repeated fever. His chest radiographic displayed suspected active lesions; and nasopharyngeal examination inspected irregular mucosa with white patch covering the nasopharyngeal area; and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presented diffuse thickening of the mucosal wall of nasopharynx; moreover, the biopsy specimen pathological results showed ulceration with mucosal squamous papillary hyperplasia.Finally,acid-fast staining of nasopharyngeal secretions disclosed acid-fast bacilli was positive. However, the latter patient was completely different from the former in clinical presentations, while MRI finding was almost the same. In addition, the endoscopy depicted that characteristic of nasopharyngeal lesion was smooth, congested and swelling, and the pathological result revealed granulomatous inflammation with epithelioid histiocytes and multinucleated giant cells of Langerhans type.Combined their clinical manifestations with various laboratory and imaging examinations, both of the two patients were eventually diagnosed as nasopharyngeal tuberculosis.