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Summary:The report concerns a case of primary carcinoma of the gall bladder in a 53 year old man, who, 13 years previously underwent a pan-proctocolectomy for ulcerative colitis. Previous reports are reviewed, highlighting the difficulty of early diagnosis.

'Pitted' erythrocyte counts are widely used in the quantitative assessment of functional hyposplenism and in the prediction of recurrence of splenic function in splenectomized subjects. Both of these functions require counts from electively splenectomized controls for comparison. The 'pitted' erythrocyte counts in patients splenectomized for congenital spherocytosis are lower than those found in subjects whose spleens were removed electively for other reasons. This appears to be due to the specific membrane defect which impairs the formation of the vacuoles which are responsible for the appearance of 'pitted' erythrocytes under the interference-phase microscope.

The histology of regenerated ectopically implanted spleen (splenotic tissue) from splenectomized rats was compared with that of normal rat spleen. Computer-assisted morphometric analysis revealed significant decreases in both the number and area of splenic nodules in splenotic tissue when compared with normal spleen. It is suggested that the reduction in the amount of white pulp present could explain at least in part the reduced ability of splenotic tissue to deal with infection.