Bone marrow patterns in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia related to various clinical and haematological findings. A preliminary report.

In a retrospective study of 55 CLL cases subjected to bone-marrow biopsy, the histological pattern of the bone-marrow was correlated to the clinical and haematological data. Instead of the four histological patterns described by Rozman et al., five patterns have been established. The clinical staging according to the Montserrat score, compared with the bone-marrow pattern, showed a good correlation, when maintenance or replacement of normal haematopoiesis was considered. The bone-marrow pattern with maintained haematopoiesis was predicting a favourable clinical correlation; those with replaced haematopoiesis corresponded to a poor prognosis. The correlation is a useful index of severity and prognosis of CLL.