Reading the Blood Film: Blast Cells

What this deck covers

Reading the Blood Film: Blast 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. The nucleus fills the cell
2. The texture of the nucleus
3. A pale area inside the nucleus
4. Not the same as episode six
5. Which one is not a white cell
6. How many of the white cells
7. What the report can say
8. Where this report goes
9. A cell that cannot be read
10. The smeared cells again
11. Two populations at once
12. Against what they are counted

What this deck teaches

• Describe the cell, do not name the disease. A film can say that blast cells are present and what they look like. What they are is settled by tests the film cannot perform.
• The nucleus fills the cell. Little cytoplasm around a large nucleus is the proportion that first marks these cells out, and it can be judged against the lymphocytes on the same slide.
• Chromatin texture is the discriminator. Fine and evenly dispersed against coarse and clumped. It separates these cells from the reactive lymphocytes of the last episode, and size does not.
• A nucleolus is worth recording. A pale rounded area inside the nucleus is part of the description and is visible at the magnification already in use.
• Read only where the film can be read. Chromatin cannot be assessed where cells are piled up, so a cell at the thick end is not classified – it is passed over.
• Give the proportion of white cells. A count against a hundred white cells means the same thing to the next reader as it did to the person who made it.

Exam pearls from this deck

• Judge the proportion against the cells beside it, not from memory.
• The comparison is on the same slide. Use it.

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.