Welcome to another Ask
Dr. Vaughan on YouTube and on Periscope live. We have two audiences here going on two different cameras at the same time
the audience on YouTube we are talking about
Lymph nodes, swollen Lymph nodes
and why they get swollen and what to do about them oftentimes people will feel in their neck a lump and get concerned because
lumps go along with bad things and tumors and so you want to make sure that it's not a cancer, well
swollen Lymph nodes are actually a very common thing and people will get them from something as small as just
an infection on the skin like a pimple nearby that drains to that area or
having an upper respiratory infection
Swollen Lymph nodes are famous for going along with strep throat, but also along with mono, mononucleosis the kissing disease
So these are things that we see in primary care quite often. A swollen Lymph gland is caused by inflammation. Inflammation occurs
whenever there's some kind of an injury to the body oftentimes we associate it with infection although
not exclusively as we learned with inflamed sebaceous cysts that can enlarge and sometimes rupture and
inflamed Lymph node you have the four cardinal signs of inflammation which are redness swelling
pain and warmth. You get these four markers of inflammation
Whenever there's some kind of an injury or infection. In the lymph nodes it's no different, and this is where you're having white blood cells
kill or attack some kind of
offense now it may be
nothing as is the case with a sebaceous cyst. I shouldn't say actually nothing
figuratively nothing
Like when a sebaceous cyst ruptures in the skin and you have this material that the body
views as a foreign invader even though it's just sebaceous oil
but, it's not supposed to be
inside of the skin and so the
the body attacks it with white blood cells and they have these chemicals that come out
and there's also a certain type of white blood cell called phagocyte. phage or phago means eat and so it's it
engulfs whatever it's trying to get rid of and it in
essence digests it, breaks it apart, and when this is going on there's increased blood flow which causes you to have more fluid
which makes it larger, the blood is warm, makes it warm so you get your your warmth and your
swelling both from that you also get the red color
because of increased blood flow that's what the redness and inflammation is from and
this can happen in a lymph node and in fact it can happen
so much so that you can you actually see the redness from the outside oftentimes
you can't, you just feel that's that sore and there's a lump there that wasn't there before
Well there was something there before there was a lymph node there before but now it's enlarged and that's why it draws attention to itself
Enlarged lymph nodes in the setting of something going on like an infection in the skin or an upper respiratory infection
That's fairly normal. You may have
enlargement in that lymph node that lasts for a long time. Some people do have these these lymph nodes that you can feel in their neck
that just
stay after a period of inflammation, and it's from
Fibrosis or a scarring type action that occurs, and then they they just stick around you always feel them even though
they're not inflamed, and they're not enlarging and they're not hard
We get worried about hard enlarging Lymph nodes because that can be something bad like a lymphoma or Leukemia
occurring and that needs to be checked out
but the the ones that are tender in the setting of something that should be tender because you have something going on like an
infection in the area
Those you can give a few weeks to go away. Now I'm not going to tell anybody
that this is medical advice that you should not get your swollen lymph glands checked out. Not at all. Far be it from the truth.
I would want you to get it checked now somebody
is writing in with a question about the words palpable and movable. Palpable means you can feel it
Moveable means you kind of move your your fingers around and you can actually feel the lymph node
moving under the skin. If it's not free to move under the skin, if you feel like it is attached, that's absolutely something to get evaluated
immediately because that's concerning for some kind of invasive growth. Now. I talked a little bit about
Lymph nodes draining an area and that's what happens. We have lymph nodes in the neck and they drain
the Lymph areas are the Lymph channels that come from
around the face and neck we also have lymph nodes in the axilla or armpit
And these are famous in the setting of breast cancer because these are the lymph nodes where oftentimes there'll be a lump that
is from a spreading of a breast cancer, the breast on that side of the body to
that axilla and those like axillary nodes are checked, and that's actually part of a breast examination that a doctor does
annually on female patients
you know you also have some lymph nodes in the elbows that these as
a primary care and former emergency physician I associate the
lymph nodes around the elbow with cat scratch fever because generally people get cat scratches on the hands where else and
the first thing that you'll find is that in addition to them feeling sick is this sore
swelling around the elbow and then they can drain even further to the lymph gland lymph nodes in the axilla
You notice I messed up. I said lymph glands because oftentimes people are talking about swollen glands well
It's not actually glands like the salivary glands that get swollen with something like mumps, but rather lymph node. Now
somebody was also asking, actually was Danielle,
from Ypsilanti, Michigan
who is asking can you get swollen lymph nodes in the groin and absolutely that's another
common location that we check for Lymph nodes is right in the inguinal region or the area where your thigh comes together
Let's see do we have our friend in the back
Here are the lymph nodes. Can you see the lymph nodes on Francis? These green lines here
represent
lymph channels, lymph channels drain fluid from the body or help the
body that has fluid that's come out of the arteries and
didn't go back in the veins and just kind of sits there. It gets drained by these lymph channels which eventually
go back into the circulation near the heart and these little green spots represent Lymph nodes in the groin area and
you can have
drainage
of
material to this area
of the Lymph nodes in the
groin if you have say infection in the leg or anywhere in the, I was going to say lower extremities but that's what legs are
You can also get them inside of the abdomen
but those you can't feel because they're way deep inside and behind the internal organs. These are places that
doctors check, surgeons check, when they're operating on people with cancer to check for spread of
the cancer that they're operating on, of course, if the cancer has spread to the nearest Lymph node
that means it goes up a grade
Staging, I'm sorry I said grade. I should have said stage because grading is something different
So you have stage ones through four cancer and when you have it going to lymph nodes
then you've reached stage, it depends on the cancer with stage two or three
so I hope that gives you a little bit understanding of
what this whole thing of swollen Lymph nodes is about. If you guys have any questions
you can go ahead and write them in the comments below on the video
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comments on the YouTube. Until next time, this is Dr. Mark Vaughan telling you to stay in good health.