Bone marrow aspiration is often required for the treatment of blood disorders. Whenever a doctor recommends that a patient undergo a bone marrow aspiration, most patients, including their families, feel confused and fearful: Will the bone marrow aspiration cause harm to them? Will it leave serious after-effects? Some people may even think that the bone puncture may cause paraplegia. More than that, they are afraid that the “bone penetration test” will be very painful. …… all kinds of doubts and fears, so that patients or family members often take the attitude of refusal, avoidance, delay the diagnosis and treatment of certain diseases, the root cause of this is the lack of understanding of “bone penetration” test and its importance of awareness.
“Bone marrow aspiration is a common and reliable means of diagnosing blood diseases. Bone marrow fluid is extracted through “bone aspiration” for morphology, histochemistry, cytogenetics and ultrastructural examination, bone marrow stem cell culture, bacterial culture and parasite examination, which have a very important role in the diagnosis and treatment of hematologic diseases. Myeloma, etc. have decisive diagnostic value. It is useful for the examination of long-term unexplained febrile diseases, lymph node enlargement, multiple etiologies, and also for the judgment of the efficacy and prognosis of various blood diseases, aplastic anemia, etc.
Compared with other invasive tests, bone marrow aspiration is quite safe. Some people tend to confuse it with the risky “lumbar puncture”, but these are two very different examinations, and the sites of puncture and their indications are very different. “Lumbar puncture involves inserting a probe accurately into the spinal cord cavity to determine cerebral pressure and obtain cerebrospinal fluid specimens for corresponding laboratory tests, which is very demanding for the operator. In contrast, “bone puncture” involves inserting a puncture needle into several raised bone nodes on the surface of the body and extracting a small amount of bone marrow fluid for smear and other examinations, which basically does not injure internal organs or cause sequelae. The main sites of puncture are the anterior superior iliac spine and posterior superior iliac spine of the human pelvis, both left and right. Most people can be easily palpated. In a few exceptional cases, a bone puncture of the sternal region may be required. The procedure is not complicated and each physician is trained to perform it successfully.
Most of the “bone punctures” are performed in specialized bone marrow puncture rooms, but in a few special cases they can be performed at the bedside. The procedure is strictly aseptic and local anesthesia is provided with lidocaine, and most of the puncture procedures are painless, with mainly soreness and swelling, and a transient stabbing pain during aspiration. A physician skilled in “bone puncture” can complete the operation within 3 to 5 minutes. The eye of the puncture needle is similar to the eye of an intramuscular injection, which can be moved freely in a few minutes with a little pressure after wrapping. As far as the bone punctures we have done in the hematology department over the years, there have not been any patients with obvious uncomfortable reactions. Occasionally, for some specific reasons (such as blood thinning), several repeat punctures are needed to provide reliable diagnostic value.
“Bone puncture is simple and easy to perform, and in no way can cause serious harm to the patient as commonly thought, and it is an important test for the diagnosis and treatment of blood diseases. This will not only help the diagnosis and treatment of your disease, but also help you to take less detours in the process of diagnosis and treatment, and to a certain extent, reduce the economic burden, make a clear diagnosis early, judge the efficacy, so that the disease can be effectively and timely treated.