[Clinicopathological examination of 12 autopsy cases of carcinomatosis of the bone marrow]

Abstract

Twelve autopsy cases of carcinomatosis of the bone marrow were examined clinicopathologically. Among them, 7 were gastric adenocarcinoma, and the other 5 were a rectal carcinoid and carcinomas of the lung, prostate, maxilla and kidney, respectively. The gastric cancers were almost all poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma with mucin production and presented poorer prognoses than the other cancers. Leukoerythroblastic anemia, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia and DIC were found more frequently in the gastric cancers than in the others. It is concluded that the evolution of these critical hematologic disorders may be dependent on differences of histologic type, original focus and cancer-host interactions as well as wide-spread skeletal metastases of cancer cells.