The technique of bone marrow aspiration in children.

Bone marrow aspiration has now been an established procedure in haematology for close on 50 years (Pianese, 1905), but it has been only during the last two decades, following the studies of Kato (1937), Vogel and Bassen (1939), and Diwany (1940), that a study of bone marrow has become routine procedure in the diagnosis of an increasing variety of diseases in children. The aim of this communication is to present the technical procedures that have been arrived at in an active children's hospital. No attempt will be made to discuss the cytological aspects of bone marrow in infants, which have been the subject of much study (Eberhard, Etcheverry, and Hille, 1946; Britton and Neumark, 1949) and are well presented by Whitby and Britton (1957).