Bone marrow necrosis diagnosed during life: clinical and laboratory features of extensive involvement.

Bone marrow necrosis occurred in two patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. One had a four-year history of lymphoma for which he received combination chemotherapy. Severe bone pain, abdominal pain and fever occurred during the terminal part of his illness. The other patient presented initially with symptoms of bone pain and lymphadenopathy. At bone marrow examinations, both had anatomically extensive bone marrow necrosis with associated evidence of involvement by lymphoma. The previously recognized clinical features of bone marrow necrosis and its complications occurred in one or both of these illustrative cases, with the exception that bone tenderness was absent in both. Attempts were made to correlate the technetium-99m sulphur colloid scans with sites of disease as determined by the bone marrow examinations.