Comparison of bone marrow smear, biopsy and flow cytometry in diagnosis of lymphoma patients with bone marrow involvement

Objective To compare the effectiveness,correlativity,and acceptability of the three methods:bone marrow smear,biopsy and flow cytometry in diagnosis of lymphoma patients with bone marrow involvement.Methods 68 cases of early stage lymphoma were studied by observing and comparing positive rates of the three methods:bone marrow smear,biopsy and flow cytometry.Results After confirming the bone marrow involvement,the positive rates for the 68 cases using bone marrow smear,biopsy and flow cytometry were 16.2 ％ (11/68),33.8 ％ (23/68) and 10.3 ％ (7/68) respectively.Bone marrow biopsy had the highest positive rate compared to the other methods.It was statistically significant when comparing the differences of the 3 methods (P ＜ 0.05).According to the correlativity analysis of the 3 methods,bone marrow smear and biopsy correlated with each other (P =0.002),while flow cytometery did not (P =0.270).Conclusions Morphological examination of the bone marrow smear is a fundamental method to test bone marrow involvement in lymphoma.Bone marrow biopsy creates the highest positive rate and has clear advantage compared to the other methods,however,bone marrow smear must be used at the same time as a complement. Key words: Lymphoma;  Bone marrow smear;  Biopsy;  Flow cytometry