[Extracorporeal blood irradiation using telecesium apparatus. II. Morphological studies in patients with chronic...

The second communication of our experiences with extracorporeal blood irradiation comprises a systematical investigation of the conditions in blood picture and, in one case, of the morphological findings within lymph node punctures, during long-term treatment of two selected patients with a rather different course of the disease. One of the cases showed a typical pattern of chronic lymphadenosis which was to be influenced fairly well; the other case revealed an aggressive tendency with only a feeble response to extracorporeal blood irradiation. By means of toluidine blue staining, until now being used for the verification of nucleoli and their different shapes only in experimentations on animals, a good correlation of the nucleole analysis in the peripheral blood picture and in the lymph node biopsies with the clinical progress of the disease has been observed. Thus, this simple cytological method combined with customary clinical examinations may serve as a criterion for the judgement on the course of the disease and on the therapeutic success.