A needle is described for obtaining specimens of non weight-bearing hyaline cartilage from the lateral femoral condyle. The hyaline cartilage of the femur continues onto the lateral surface of the condyle as a 'lip' which lies deep to the capsule of the knee joint and is readily accessible for biopsy. The cylindrical needle is hollow with a sharpened cutting edge and is 5 mm. in diameter. Withi...

Introduction: Pancytopenia is condition in which there is reduction of all the 3 peripheral blood lineage and must be suspected on clinical grounds when a patient presents with unexplained pallor. Careful examination of a blood film is important if reason for the pancytopenia is not apparent from the clinical history. If this does not reveal the cause, bone marrow aspiration and trephine may be...

Improved cytomorphology of semithin resin sections over paraffin wax embedded sections may be important in diagnostic haematopathology. However, resin embedding can make immunohistochemical antigen detection or DNA isolation for clonal gene rearrangement assays difficult. This review describes the processing of bone marrow biopsies using buffered formaldehyde based fixation and epoxy resin embe...

Materials and Methods: BMA and BMB were performed on 50 patients. Criteria of inclusion included the main indications for performing this procedure, the availability of full medical records and patient consent. The patients had a male to female sex ratio of 1.6:1 and a wide age range from 4 years to 74 years. Results: In the present study, the main indications for bone marrow examination were c...

Adverse events following bone marrow biopsy are rare but poorly documented. Annual UK surveys are building up a data-base on the frequency and nature of such complications, which will provide the evidence on which recommendations can be based. The latest annual survey documented 15 adverse events, mainly hemorrhagic, among 20323 procedures.

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) remains a global health problem. According to the 2013 Global Report on Tuberculosis, 8.6 million people developed TB in 2012 and 1.3 million died from the disease. An estimated 13% of people who developed TB in 2012 were HIV-positive, and 75% of these lived in Africa. While pulmonary TB is the commonest form of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, extrapulmonary T...

Background: To develop a new method for synovial biopsy with ultrasound (US) guidance and a semi-automatic SuperCore biopsy instrument. Materials and Methods: Twenty-two patients (8 men and 14 women, median age 57 years (range 22–79 years)) with active arthritis or tenosynovitis were enrolled from April 2012 through October 2012. Each patient had one joint or tendon biopsied. US examination was...