Diseases of the bone marrow
An important disease of the bone marrow is leukemia. There are different forms of leukemia, depending on whether it develops quickly or slowly and which cell rows are affected. However, they often have one thing in common: a patient with leukemia can therefore be conspicuous by paleness (anemia), increased bruising and skin bleeding that occurs even with minor trauma (lack of platelets) and frequent infections (lack of functional lymphocytes).
Another disease of the bone marrow is osteomyelitis, an inflammation mostly caused by bacteria.
- In the bone marrow masses of white blood cells (lymphocytes) are produced. This displaces the production of the other cells.
This results in a deficiency of erythrocytes and thrombocytes. This leads to anemia and blood clotting disorders. Although a large number of lymphocytes are produced, these are “mutants” and therefore not able to fulfil their normal tasks – namely the immune defence. For this reason, leukemias usually also lead to a pronounced susceptibility to infections.
The bone marrow in diagnostics
A so-called bone marrow puncture, i.e. a sample collection from the bone marrow, can be an important step towards diagnosis in various diseases. Among other things, it is used for suspected cases of some types of leukaemia, and in some cases for Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodkin lymphomas and other diseases of the haematopoietic system (multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndrome). Bone marrow puncture may also be necessary in the search for metastases (i.e. tumor cell metastasis) in breast cancer (breast carcinoma) and lung cancer (bronchial carcinoma), among others.
Even if one of the cell rows in the blood is greatly increased or decreased (as is often the case with leukemia, for example), this can be an indication for bone marrow puncture. The puncture is usually carried out on the iliac crest after prior anaesthesia. A distinction is made between aspiration and biopsy for the type of bone marrow collection.
- During aspiration, a small sample is aspirated, this method is used when examination of individual cells is sufficient.
- A biopsy, i.e. the punching out of a small section of tissue, is performed when the bone marrow must be viewed as a whole.
