Human blood, 400x

I’m young, freshman in highschool my school recently had a biology teacher from a university come talk to us about different medical field positions. Hematology seemed very interesting to me, how long would the pathway be to become a hematologists? And does anyone recommend?

How long do you all leave albumin in the whole blood to albumin mixture when making an albumin slide for smudge cells?

I had made a mixture and made the albumin slide quickly right after. I also let the same mixture sit for 15mins-20ishmin and then made the albumin slide. The cells (lymphs and actually neutrophils too) looked way more intact in the mixture left out longer. However, the lymphs did look more atypical/weirder looking in the longer mixture than the shorter one, which made me wonder if the albumin was distorting the lymphs more with time.

(Picture attached is just a picture taken for Google)

Has anyone ever performed a transfusion on a febrile patient? Doesn’t it make detecting a transfusion reaction more challenging? Sorry for the attachment. Im desperate for answers

Hi everybody, could you please help me with this blood smear from a CLL patient? Apart from lymphocytes and red blood cells what other cells are there? Are there any typical features of CLL blood smears? Thanks everyone

Hello, just a humble Emergency Physician here with a case from several months ago that generated a curious question that I keep thinking about. Middle-aged female presented to the ED with acute onset of pain concerning for cardiac ischemia as well as a moderate, holocephalic headache over the past two days that was atypical for her. No relevant past medical history apart from a recent concern for a non-specific erythrocytosis discovered only a few days earlier on routine outpatient labs; no additional work up yet pursued. Additionally, no identifiable risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD), but no specific diagnostic studies performed previously as they were never indicated.

Vital signs were normal without requirement for oxygen supplementation. Labs displayed a markedly rising high-sensitivity troponin and an H/H of ~20/50% (forgive me, I’ve forgot the specific values as well as the rest of her CBC differentiation). EKG captured non-specific ST segment changes but nothing identifying a specific coronary perfusion territory nor evidence of acute right heart strain.

Statistically, I suspect undiagnosed CAD as the culprit, but unfortunately the patient elected to leave against medical advice prior to transfer to a PCI-capable center from our community ED despite my extensive conversation with her.

I still have this nagging question regarding the potential utility of phlebotomy if her case was caused, either in part or completely, by increased viscosity. I was able to convince her to remain in the ED long enough for me to ask this question of our consulting hematology/oncology service. Unfortunately, the question seemed outside of their specific expertise and the conclusion we came to was that I “probably shouldn’t”.

Hopefully this is an appropriate venue to discuss this case, as it’s a rare presentation and might spark some interesting discussion.

Just a little something fun I made years ago during my time in the lab☺️

Perhaps is it not blood at all but a red organism? Context: The op (@ mattattoom) is a fisherman and posted pics of fish on a boat right before this so I assume this is spilled blood on the boat from a fish or sea creature. He has a large following and I think is Italian, so I didn’t bother DMing. I tried to look this up but couldn’t find the right descriptor words to see what I needed.

Sorry for the great quality photo. I’m just wondering in your opinion, are these really dark & small lymphs or just artifacts that can’t be categorized? If it helps, there weren’t any NRBCs identified. Thanks!

Picture is just a random slide with some blasts I took a pic of for funsies.

So I am a somewhat new grad technologist, and right now I'm training in heme at work. My trainer is requiring me to provide a suspected diagnosis to pathology for each abnormal smear I send.

This feels really wrong to me; pathology is going to know way more than me, do other stains, and use flow to identify what exactly is happening with the patient. Not only am I most likely not going to be accurate in my assumption, but also I can't imagine a pathologist would be super psyched to have some dumb new grad MT telling them what to diagnose. Don't get me wrong, I understand the value of being familiar with relevant disease states, but i figured I'd have to go to school for a much longer time and then as a result make way more money if I was going to be expected to visually differentiate lymphoma from leukemia.

I thought my role was to find the cells that look wrong, then tap in pathology, but maybe I am too new to heme to understand how this is supposed to work? Input is appreciated.