Bone marrow aspiration is employed in the diagnosis of various hematological
diseases, evaluation of treatments and hematopoietic activity. Under certain conditions,
dry tap may be encountered when aspiration is attempted.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the incidence of dry tap in 3007 patients
with 3280 times of bone marrow aspirations experienced at the Medical Research
Laboratory, Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine,
from 1970 to 1979.
The results were as the follows:
1. Dry tap was encountered in 120 patients (4.0%) and 136 times of aspirations(4.
1%).
2. The incidence of dry tap was:
a) 77.8% (72.0%) in 18 patients (25 aspirations) with primary myelofibrosis,
b) 47.6% (47.6%) in 42 patients (42 aspirations) with metastatic carcinomas,
c) 27.0% (22.7%) in 111 patients (36 aspirations) with acute Iymphoblastic leukemias,
d) 24.2% (20.5%) in 95patients (122 aspirations) with chronic myelogenous leukemias,
e) 6.8% (5.5%) in 235 patients (326 aspirations) with acute myelogenous leukemias,
f) 6.7% (3.9% ) in 30 patients (51 aspirations) with multip1e myelomas,
g) 4.8% (4.5%) in 186 patients (220 aspirations) with aplastic anemia,
h) 0.2% (0.18%) in 2233 patients (2274 aspirations) with other diseases.
3. The most frequent diagnoses in 120 patients with dry tap were various types of
leukemias (59.2%), among which acute Iymphoblatic leukemia was the first (25.0%). The
others were chronic myelogenous leukemia (19.2%), metastatic carcinomas (16.7%), acute
myelogenous leukemia (13.3%), primary myelofibrosis (11.7%), aplastic anemia (7.5%),
and multiple myeloma (1.7%) in order (Table 2).
4. The clinical and peripheral blood findings in patients with dry tap in each disease
were similar to those of original diseases.
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