MEDICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE, Assignments of Medical Sciences

Download MEDICAL LABORATORY SCIENCE and more Assignments Medical Sciences in PDF only on Docsity! Respondent: Registered Medical Technologist City/Province of Work: Quezon City Tenure in Work: 4 Years In the present times, we have a more automated way of performing WBC differential counting. Still, | don't think we should totally abandon the manual counting. Manual differential counting of WBC is helpful but if there are advanced ways to do so that may help reduce the errors associated with that manual method, then it would help. The machines that we have right now indeed offered a more convenient way of analyzing blood samples. All we have to do is to extract a blood sample, put it in the appropriate tube with the appropriate anticoagulant, then feed the specimen into the machine and wait for a minute or so for the result. It makes the lives of the laboratory technicians easier compared to doing manual counting, which involves more steps. | am referring to the extraction of the specimen, then the preparation of the stained slide. However, machines, in general, need to be calibrated. Unless it is correctly calibrated, we cannot fully rely on the results that it will produce. Aside from the issue about calibration, we also need to perform manual counting for certain questionable results that the machine might produce. For example, when the result has a markedly increased WBC count with an increased lymphocyte count significantly, we should make a smear and confirm manually if those are actually lymphocytes or blast cells (which might be read by the machine as lymphocytes) that suggests malignancy. Another example is when we have an abnormally low count. An inadequate sample may cause this, and in order to confirm it is otherwise, we have to make a smear and then do a manual counting. To conclude, it's not a bad thing to embrace automation in terms of WBC differential counting because it offers advantages which include lesser time in performing the test. However, we shouldn't fully abandon the manual counting technique. Although it seems to be obsolete, it still is a very reliable and inexpensive confirmatory procedure to any questionable results that a machine might produce. Reference WEC counts. eClinpath. (2020, November 16). https://eclinpath.com/hematology/tests/wbc-count/. Blumenreich MS. The White Blood Cell and Differential Count. In: Walker HK, Hall WD, Hurst JW, editors. Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations. 3rd edition. Boston: Butterworths; 1990. Chapter 153. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nIm.nih.gov/books/NBK261/