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CASE REPORT
Pathological fractures in a patient with chronic lymphatic leucaemia without disease progression
  1. Jasper C M Langenberg,
  2. Willem-Maarten Bosman,
  3. Jephta van den Bremer,
  4. Ewan D Ritchie
  1. Department of Surgery, Rijnland Ziekenhuis, Leiderdorp, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Dr Ewan D Ritchie, e.ritchie{at}rijnland.nl

Summary

We describe a case of a 59-year-old woman with a medical history of upper leg pain and chronic lymphatic leucaemia (CLL), with known diffuse bone marrow infiltration and without signs of lymphatic or extra-lymphatic disease activity on positron emission tomography CT (PET-CT). She presented with multiple fractures of the pelvis, sacrum and left proximal femur as a result of a low energy fall. During admission, she sustained a non-traumatic fracture of the right proximal femur. Pathological fractures in patients with CLL are usually based on Richter’s transformation or multiple myeloma. However, in the current case, a PET-CT and a bone marrow biopsy showed no signs of this. We did see a normoparathyroid hypercalcaemia in our patient, most likely caused by a CLL-based release of local osteoclast stimulating factors. A combination of fludarabine/cyclofosfamide/rituximab was started as treatment in combination with allopurinol and sodium bicarbonate to prevent further osteolysis.

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