Comparison of touch imprints with aspirate smears for evaluating bone marrow specimens

We compared the differential counts of normal and abnormal bone marrow from touch imprints with those from aspirate smears to determine whether the to uch imprint was reliable for independent routine use in the examination of bone marrow and the classification of hematologic abnormalities. Normocellu lar bone marrow specimens were obtained from 87 patients without hematologi c abnormality. Abnormal bone marrow specimens were obtained from 173 patien ts with treated or untreated neoplastic hematologic disease, including acut e myeloid leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, hairy cell Leukemia, myeloma, and acute Lymphoblasti c leukemia. We found no diagnostic difference in the differential counts fr om touch imprints and aspirate smears of normocellular bone marrow, and alt hough we found some difference between the differential counts in certain c ases of diseased bone marrow, the touch imprint proved to be a reliable dia gnostic tool for determining the cellular composition of normal bone marrow and more reliable for the diagnosis of bone marrow involved by a neoplasti c hematologic disease. Our findings suggest that evaluating touch imprints should be considered a standard practice in examining bone marrow.