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Comparison between 1-needle technique versus 2-needle technique for bone marrow aspiration and biopsy procedures
Alyaa Al-Ibraheemi1, Tiffany Pham, Lei Chen
1Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
Context:
Bone marrow examination is essential for diagnosis and staging of hematologic disorders. Traditionally, the bone marrow biopsy and aspirate are obtained with 2 needles at 2 separate sites. This approach is associated with significant discomfort, procedural time, and occasionally, morbidity. Although previous observations had suggested that a single-needle technique at one site is a simpler and less-painful procedure, there had been concern that the 1-needle technique may yield a suboptimal biopsy for diagnosis.
Objective:
To conduct a systematic comparison of multiple parameters of bone marrow biopsy specimens obtained by the traditional 2-needle technique versus the 1-needle technique for bone marrow collection.
Design:
We retrospectively evaluated 20 biopsy specimens obtained by each of the 2 mentioned techniques by comparing the morphologic quality of the biopsy, biopsy length, and biopsy cellularity.
Results:
We found that the 1-needle technique yielded an adequate biopsy for diagnosis. The measured parameters of the samples obtained by the 1-needle versus 2-needle techniques were similar.
Conclusion:
This study suggests that the 1-needle technique may be preferred for bone marrow aspirate and biopsy.
