Aims and objectives
Monoclonal plasma cell diseases are an heterogeneous group of disorders which include monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS),
smoldering myeloma (SMM),
multiple myeloma (MM) and plasmacytoma (P).
Plasmacytomais a condition in which there is a biopsy-proven solitary bone or soft tissue lesion with evidence of clonal plasma cells in an otherwise asymptomatic patient.
Clonal bone marrow plasma cells are <10% and there is no serum or urine paraprotein detectable.
MGUS describes an asymptomatic premalignant stage characterised by stable monoclonal paraprotein in serum (<30g/L) and limited...
Methods and materials
Patient population: in this retrospective analysis we enrolled all the patients with plasma cell dyscrasia which underwent WBMRI between September 2013 and October 2016.
Our study population included 23 patients,
16 females and 7 males,
with an average age of 57 years (range 30-82).
Four patients were classified as MGUS,
5 as SMM,
11 as MM and 3 as P according to IMWG.
MRI imaging: all examinations were performed on a 1,5T MRI scanner (Ingenia,
Philips Medical System).
All participants were scanned supine with arms...
Results
Bone marrow infiltration
The presence of bone marrow infiltration was significantly superior in patients classified as MM and P (86,7%) than those classified as MGUS and SMM (12,5%) (p=0,0010) (Fig. 7).We found bone marrow infiltration in 14 out of 23 patients (60,8%): 1 with SMM,
11 with MM and 2 with P.
On the contrary,
we did not find any evidence of bone marrow infiltration in patients with MGUS (Fig. 8).
The degree of infiltration was positively correlated with the severity of the clinical stage...
Conclusion
We confirm that the presence and the degree of diffuse bone marrow infiltration as well as the presence of focal lesions are correlated with the clinical stage.Conspicuity of focal bone lesions on DWI images is significantly higher than on T1 and STIR.
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