Hematopathology Intro Flashcards
If you have weakness, fatigue, dyspnea, pallor and jaundice, you could have an abnormality of what type of blood cell?
red blood cell
If you have bleeding, bruising, and petechiae, you could have an abnormality of what type of blood cell?
platelets
If you have infections, fevers, splenomegaly and lymphadenopathy, you could have an abnormality of what type of blood cell?
white cell
Which do we use more to determine if a patient is anemic, RBC count or Hb?
Hb
What is the hematocrit?
It’s where you take a tube of blood, spin it down and see what percentage of the blood is RBCs - it should be about 30%
we don’t use it much anymore
Why is the hematocrit artificially high in sickle cell anemia?
the sickled cells don’t stack, so they don’t spin down as well
What does the mean corpuscular volume tell you? What’s normal?
how big the RBCs are on average
normal is 80-100
What is the RDW?
the red blood cell distribution of width - tells you the range of size of cells
What is the MCH?
mean cell Hb - the average weight of Hb in each RBC
What is the MCHC?
The concentration of Hb in each RBC
Which is used more? THe MCH or the MCHC?
MCHC, but it’s still not used all that often
What are the 10 things you should look for systematically on a blood smear?
- RBC number
- RBC size
- RBC shape
- RBC chromasia - how much Hb is in the cell
- Reticulocytes
- Weird stuff
- WBC count
- WBC differential
- Platelets count
- platelet morphology
