RESUMEN
Background and purpose:Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) is playing an increasingly important role in the diagnosis, therapy and follow-up of lymphoma patients. This study aimed to explore clinical and pathological features and bone marrow infiltration status in lymphoma patients with diffused high bone marrow glucose uptake on18F-FDG PET/CT.Methods:It was a retrospective study. Bone marrow infiltration status, pathological and clinical data from 62 cases of pathologically diagnosed lymphoma and diffused high bone marrow glucose uptake were analyzed.Results:Distribution of histopathological subtype in those cases was in accordance with that in previously reported Chinese lymphoma patients. Significant difference was demonstrated in standard uptake value (SUV) between pa-tients with aggressive and indolent histopathological subtypes (8.43vs 5.38,P=0.048), patients with and without B symp-toms (8.30vs 5.72,P=0.033), and patients with and without bone marrow infiltration (8.78vs 6.96,P=0.020). 32 patients were diagnosed as “bone marrow infiltration” by bone marrow biopsy. There was significant difference in histopathologi-cal subtype distribution between patients with and without bone marrow infiltration (P=0.001). In patients with bone marrow infiltration, there were higher proportions of mantle cell lymphoma, nodal marginal zone B cell lymphoma, Burkitt’s lym-phoma and anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In contrast, patients without bone marrow infiltration suffered more from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, peripheral T cell lymphoma, enteropathic T cell lymphoma and extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma (nasal type). False positive results in bone marrow glucose uptake may be caused by fever or anemia.Conclusion:Diffused high bone marrow glucose uptake on18F-FDG PET/CT should be evaluated in combination with the uptake values, clinical features and histological subtypes, to minimize the misdiagnosis and to better guide staging and therapy of lymphoma.