Eosinophil Cell and Mass Appearance in Atypical Mycobacterium Infection of Lymphadenitis

Introduction: Atypical mycobacterium (ATM) is acid fast bacilli not including tuberculosis and may had opportunistic feature in environment either in air or soil. While symptoms of ATM infection may look similar with typical tuberculosis, these specific group of disease were harder to treat and would necessitate longer antibiotics consumption. While PCR may readily available to detect ATM, anatomical pathology method such as biopsy may be a cheaper alternative in low-resource settings to differentiate between atypical and typical mycobacterium infection. Aim: To analyze correlation between eosinophil cells and eosinophil mass with ATM in lymphadenopathy patient. Methods: This study is an analytical observational study with cross-sectional design which aimed to review diagnostic abilities of eosinophil cell and mass to detect ATM. Patient would undergo both PCR as gold standard of diagnosis and cytology biopsy aspiration as comparative diagnostic modalities. Data would be presented from SPSS v. 25. Results: We collected 70 subjects that fulfill inclusion and exclusion criteria. Most samples were dominated by female in relatively young age. There are 37 patients with ATM in which 75,7% patients cytology result shown expression of eosinophil cells and 71,4% patients shown eosinophilic mass. Chi-square test revealed that statistical significance existed between eosinophilic cells with ATM. However, such statistical significance was not found between eosinophilic mass and ATM. Conclusion: Eosinophilic cell can be used as alternative diagnostic modalities in diagnosing ATM. Further studies should further examine pathophysiological correlations and diagnostic power.