Comparison between 1-needle technique versus 2-needle technique for bone marrow aspiration and biopsy procedures.

Context: Bone marrow examination is essential for diagnosis and staging of hematologic disorders. Traditionally, the bone marrow biopsy and aspirate are obtained with 2 needles at 2 separate sites. This approach is associated with significant discomfort, procedural time, and occasionally, morbidity. Although previous observations had suggested that a single-needle technique at one site is a simpler and less-painful procedure, there had been concern that the 1-needle technique may yield a suboptimal biopsy for diagnosis.

Objective: To conduct a systematic comparison of multiple parameters of bone marrow biopsy specimens obtained by the traditional 2-needle technique versus the 1-needle technique for bone marrow collection.

Design: We retrospectively evaluated 20 biopsy specimens obtained by each of the 2 mentioned techniques by comparing the morphologic quality of the biopsy, biopsy length, and biopsy cellularity.

Results: We found that the 1-needle technique yielded an adequate biopsy for diagnosis. The measured parameters of the samples obtained by the 1-needle versus 2-needle techniques were similar.

Conclusion: This study suggests that the 1-needle technique may be preferred for bone marrow aspirate and biopsy.