Bone and bone marrow blood flow in blastic crisis of chronic granulocytic leukaemia.

A 133Xe washout method has been used for measuring changes of blood flow in the proximal femur of a patient with the blastic crisis of chronic granulocytic leukaemia. In the hyperplastic phase the blood flow was highly increased and over three times greater than in the hypoplastic phase of the disease and over thirteen times greater than the value in normal bone. The bone circulation and especially the first component of the two-exponential bone washout curves appeared to reflect cell proliferation and neoplastic activity of the whole bone marrow. The method may provide clinically important information in the follow-up of selected haematological diseases.