Comparison of bone marrow trephine sample quality between a drill-powered system and a manual needle system

Bone marrow biopsy (BMB) is a common procedure in haematology used for the diagnosis and evaluation of response treatment. Because the procedure is difficult for haematologists to perform, patients often experience pain and stress. On Control, a system device, was introduced in the 2000s and uses a drill-powered needle to perform BMB. The aim of this study was to compare the quality of BMB, based on the length of the trephine, the number of interosseous spaces and the interpretability of the examination, obtained from manual BMB vs. drill-powered BMB. The secondary objectives were to evaluate the patient's pain and anxiety, and the haematologist's perceived difficulty in performing BMB. This was a retrospective study conducted between June 2016 and June 2017 in the Henri Becquerel Cancer Centre in Rouen, France. A total of 439 patients were included in the study; the sex ratio (M:F) was 1.34 and 70.2% underwent a drill-powered BMB. A significant difference was observed concerning trephine length (14.30 ± 5.58 mm with the drill-powered system vs. 11.18 ± 4.43 mm with manual BMB, p