Performance of Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography and Bone Marrow Biopsy in Detecting Bone Marrow Infiltration in Lymphoma Cases

OBJECTIVE: Bone marrow infiltration (BMI) affects the stage diagnosis, and treatment of lymphoma. We aimed to evaluate the performance of bone marrow biopsy (BMB) and positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) in detecting BMI in lymphoma patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 269 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and 110 Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL) patients were evaluated retrospectively. Sensitivity, negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy were calculated for PET/CT and BMB in detecting BMI. RESULTS: Sensitivity, NPV, and accuracy for PET/CT in detecting BMI in NHL cases were 65%, 78%, and 84.4%, respectively, while they were 55%, 73.4%, and 79.9% for BMB. PET/CT performance for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma was better than that of BMB, whereas the performance of BMB was better for mantle-cell lymphoma, Burkitt’s lymphoma, and primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma. Sensitivity, NPV, and accuracy for PET/CT in HL cases were 91.3%, 97.75%, and 98.18%, respectively, while they were 56.52%, 89.69%, and 90.91% for BMB. Due to BMB, 43 (15.9%) patients in the NHL group and 2 (1.8%) patients in the HL group were protected from downstaging. CONCLUSION: Although their results vary according to NHL subtypes, PET/CT and BMB are complementary methods in determining BMI. In HL, PET/CT is an important diagnostic tool for detecting BMI, and BMB is not necessary in a significant proportion of cases.