Medicine Questions

Minimal equipment required, rapid, less invasive and minimal restraint needed, less expensive, better individual cell detail, fluid analysis can be done

Examine several times, identify the prominent cell population and nature of lesion- normal or abnormal? Inflammatory of neoplastic? Heterogenous or homogenous?

Where the sample is from and what you expect to see from that tissue, what was the sampling technique, clinical data/history of the patient

Poor sample fixation- under-fixed cells will lyse or be under-stained, when in doubt fix for longer; under-staining which results in pale cells that lack detail, if this happens you can re0stain in solutions 1 and 2 if adequately fixed

Ribosomal RNA (reticulocytes), Heinz bodies, certain infectious agents, nuclei, lipid, platelets, mast cell granules

Water artifact usually in the fixative will cause refractile bubbles, dirty stain will have precipitate in the background, contamination with organisms- change the stain often and separate clean and dirty staining stations

swollen nucleus with decreased stain intensity, predominate in toxic environments such as those induced by infectious organisms

Apply small drop of fluid on one slide and put another slide on top to essentially squash the fluid between the two

Tissue architecture preserved and can do follow up testing

May or may not be needed depending on the lesion and site of aspiration, fine cellular detail, small organisms like bacteria

Non-diagnostic, no cytologic abnormalities, inflammation (+/- infection), hyperplasia dysplasia, neoplasia

Are the number of inflammatory cells proportional to the amount of blood- general rule is about 1 WBC for every 500 RBCs is normal

Syringe is attached to needle and advance needle in lesion of interest, once in lesion draw back on syringe to about 1ml and keep that negative pressure in the syringe at all times, slightly pull back and move needle around about 5 times, before removing from lesion let go of the suction, then come out and dis-attach needle, get more air into syringe, attach needle and push onto a slide

Correct size, ADEQUATE NUMBER OF CELLS, cells INTACT, adequate separation between cells, well-stained smear

Fast, less expensive, less invasive, gives better individual cell detail, can do fluid

Erythrophagocytosis is observed within a few hours, hemosiderin and/or hematoidin crystals within macrophages can be seen after ~72 hours

Blood contains leukocytes, whenever you see blood in your specimen always ask yourself- are the number of inflammatory cells proportional to the amount of blood present

Mature and condensed chromatin, well-segmented nucleus, predominate in relatively non-toxic environments such as those induce by immune-mediated disease, neoplastic lesions, and sterile irritants

non-diagnostic because too much blood; however if this is all you had it would have to do

Impression smears are often best for "oozy" lesions or tissues, for biopsied tissues impression smears should be made with the cut surface of fresh tissue-be sure to BLOT FIRST