To assess the prevalence of cortical bone invasion (CBI) with secondary extramedullary hematopoiesis (EMH) in patients with non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia (NTDT), to determine its predilection sites on thoracic and abdominal imaging, to determine whether there is an association between various clinical and hematological parameters, and to evaluate its various findings mainly on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in addition to computed tomography (CT) scans.
This is a retrospective cohort study of 57 patients with NTDT imaged by CT or MRI. Both clinical and laboratory data were gathered. An imaging scoring system was used to describe the appearance of CBI by MRI.
Twenty-seven patients (47.4 %) were found to have CBI and EMH with the most common location being the thoracic spine. Splenectomy and lower hemoglobin level were found to be independent risk factors for its development. Most lesions were homogenous (70 %), had predominant red marrow signal (67 %), and well-defined margins (89 %).
CBI and secondary tumefactive EMH are common findings in patients with NTDT, with distinct imaging and clinical characteristics. An increased risk was seen in patients with splenectomy and lower hemoglobin. The imaging scoring system described is helpful in diagnosing and describing this entity, hence precluding unnecessary biopsies.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 02 August 2025.
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Outputs of similar age from La radiologia medica
#5
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Altmetric has tracked 33,087,078 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 66th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,013 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.4. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 9 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 4 of them.
