Staging DLBCL: bone marrow biopsy or PET-CT?

In this issue of Blood, Khan and colleagues evaluated the clinical implications of marrow involvement identified by FDG-PET-CT (2-[¹⁸F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose-positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography) vs iliac crest biopsy in newly diagnosed patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). They showed that FDG-PET-CT scanning had a higher level of accuracy for identifying marrow disease than bone marrow (BM) biopsy (BMB). Nevertheless, the identification of BM involvement by histology per se still had a prognostic impact in terms of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS).