Comparison of Bone Marrow Involvement with Bone Marrow Biopsy and PET–CT and Evaluation of Any Effects on Survival in Patients Diagnosed with Hodgkin and Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

We aimed to demonstrate whether PET–CT can replace bone marrow biopsy in detecting bone marrow involvement in subtypes of lymphoma. In addition, we aimed to also reveal whether there is a difference between the mean survival of patients with bone marrow involvement via PET–CT or biopsy. A total of 276 newly diagnosed lymphoma patients who underwent bone marrow biopsy and PET–CT prior to the treatment were scanned retrospectively. Bone marrow biopsy was used as the standard method to investigate the presence of bone marrow involvement in PET–CT. The relationship between bone marrow involvement and mean survival was compared using both methods. Out of the 276 patients, bone marrow involvement was detected with PET–CT and with biopsy, respectively in 56 patients (20.2%) and in 78 patients (28.2%). In terms of PET–CT’s accuracy with respect to revealing bone marrow involvement, the highest rates were achieved respectively in diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) (87.4%) and Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) (77.7%). In both the PET–CT and bone marrow biopsy methods, Overall Survival (OS) was found to be significantly shorter in patients with involvement than in patients without involvement (P: 0.001). PET–CT may replace bone marrow (BM) biopsy in detecting the bone marrow involvement in aggressive lymphoma subtypes such as DLBCL and HL. The presence of BM involvement at the time of diagnosis in both PET–CT and BM biopsy is associated with poor prognosis, and OS is short in this group.