Reading the Blood Film: Damaged Cells

What this deck covers

Reading the Blood Film: Damaged Cells in twelve illustrated clinical cases with worked explanations – case presentations built around clinical images, radiology, teaching illustrations and real laboratory data, with the reference range beside every value a case quotes. This visual, data-interpretation style of practice suits candidates preparing for MRCPCH AKP in particular, alongside Saudi and Gulf licensing examinations such as the Arab Board, DHA and OMSB. Each case gives you a clinical vignette, four options, the correct answer, and an explanation of why each of the other three is wrong.

The twelve cases, in order

1. A piece gone from the edge
2. Pieces, not cells
3. The colour all on one side
4. A clear space under the edge
5. Ragged, but nothing missing
6. Fragment, or small whole cell
7. Something else in the field
8. What to look at next
9. Damage only at the very edge
10. What the sample has to be
11. Two kinds of damage at once
12. Per field, or per hundred cells

What this deck teaches

• Damage is a claim about history. An unusual shape may be how the cell was made. A damaged cell has had something happen to it, and that is a different sentence.
• Describe the edge. A straight run in the outline, a smooth bite, an intact but irregular rim: the edge carries most of what separates these appearances.
• A fragment is not a small cell. They can be the same area. What differs is that a fragment has an edge that was made by breaking and a small cell does not.
• Look at the platelets on the same slide. It costs nothing, it is on the film already, and it changes what the fragments mean more than any further description of them will.
• Where, again. Crushed cells lie at the very edge of the film. Damage found only there belongs to the spreader, exactly as in episodes one and three.
• The specimen is part of the finding. A sample that has begun to clot can show nothing of this reliably, and that is worth knowing before the description is written.

Exam pearls from this deck

• Smooth, single, and the rest of the cell intact.
• A membrane at rest is curved. A straight edge was made by breaking.

The twelve worked cases in this deck, with the images and the full explanation of every option, are part of Pediatric Case Review membership. See what is included, or start with the free Pediatric Exam Review Sets.

More from this system: all haematology illustrated case decks · haematology board questions for bank-style drilling · the free Pediatric Exam Review Sets · pediatric reference values.