Diagnostic Role of Bone Marrow Aspiration and Trephine Biopsy in Haematological Practice

Bone marrow examination is a useful and cost effective diagnostic procedure in haematological practice for the diagnosis of both neoplastic and non-neoplastic haematological diseases. These procedures are also employed for typing of anaemias, evaluation of cytopenias and pyrexia of unknown origin. The bone marrow examination may either confirm the clinically suspected disease or may provide the previously unsuspected diagnosis1-3. Bone marrow aspiration alone is usually sufficient to diagnose nutritional anaemias, most of the acute leukaemias and Immune Thrombocytopenias because of ease of the applying pearl iron stain and other cytochemical stains on aspirate smears but it does not provide important diagnostic information in patients with granulomatous disease, myelofibrosis and bone marrow infiltration4. Beside this the bone marrow examination is a commonly employed tool for staging This article may be cited as: Khan TA, Khan IA, Mahmood K. Diagnostic role of bone marrow aspiration and trephine biopsy in haematological practice. J Postgrad Med Inst 2014; 28(2):217-21.