Abstract

During the 11 years period from Jan. 1, 1966 to Dec. 31, 1976, the authors found 40 cases of metastatic cancer involving the bone marrow among the 2068 cases of routine bone marrow studies. In most cases the routine bone marrow studies included histopathological examination of the hematoxyline and eosin stained tissue sections of the aspirated bone marrow particles as well as microscopic studies of the Wright stained bone marrow smears. On the 40 cases only 4 could be able to confirm histopathologically their primary site of origin. There were one each case of papillary adenocarcinoma of the thyroid, neuroblastoma of bilateral adrenal medulla, hepatocarcinoma and renal cell carcinoma arising from right kidney. The primary site of the remaining 36 cases were not verified histopathologically, though in the bone marrow smeary as well as in the tissue sections metastatic malignant cells (exclusive of leukemia as well as lymphoma cells) were found, and in many of the cases varying degree of clinical accessory data were available to suggest their primary sites. Slight to marked anemia (Table 4) were found in 22 out of 26 cases whose clinical records could be reviewed at the time of this collective study. Leukoerythroblastic blood pictures were founts in 5 out of 40 cases.