This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (27)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Harinder Garewal, MD, PhD; Brian G. M. Durie, MD

JAMA. 1982;248(15):1875-1876.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

AN AGGRESSIVE, terminal phase of plasma cell myeloma has been recently recognized.^1,2 It is usually characterized by fever, pancytopenia, rapidly enlarging soft-tissue masses, and decreasing or stable levels of myeloma protein, with tumor morphological characteristics similar to those of a poorly differentiated or large-cell lymphoma. Death usually ensues in two to six months. We describe herein a patient with multiple myeloma whose condition had remained in plateau phase³ for five years and who then had an acute pneumonialike illness with rapidly progressive pulmonary infiltrates and fever, leading to his death due to respiratory failure within several days. Both antemortem and postmortem tissue examination conclusively showed that the pulmonary infiltrates were due to plasma cell invasion and not infection. Results of serial measurements of serum protein spikes as well as bone marrow studies, including thymidine-labeling indices⁴ and in vitro stem-cell drug sensitivity assays,⁵ throughout the course of . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Section of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, and the Cancer Center, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Section of Hematology and Oncology, University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, Tucson, AZ 85724 (Dr Durie).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?