The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics
2011 , Vol 53 , Num 5
Suppurative Cervical Adenopathy and Pharyngeal Mass due to Tularemia Unresponsive to Medical Treatment
1Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit, Department of Pediatrics and 2Department of Radiology, Hacettepe University Faculty
of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey
Tularemia is a zoonotic disease caused by Francisella tularensis. Tularemia
presents with various clinical forms, such as ulceroglandular, glandular,
oculoglandular, oropharyngeal, pneumonic, and typhoidal tularemia forms. As
an intracellular pathogen, F. tularensis causes granulomatous and suppurative
lesions especially in the affected regional lymph nodes and various organs.
Tularemia is seen most commonly in the Black Sea and Marmara regions of
Turkey. Herein, we describe a girl with tularemia who presented with right
cervical lymphadenopathy and left nasopharyngeal mass. To the best of
our knowledge, this is the first reported case of tularemia with deep neck
infection and also the first tularemia case from Corum, a city in the central
Anatolian region of Turkey.
Keywords :
tularemia, deep neck infection, pediatrics.