Comparative Study of Automated Cell Counter Histogram and Peripheral Blood Smear in Diagnosis of Anaemia at Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

Introduction: In recent years, complete blood count, red blood cell histogram and peripheral blood smear have become important diagnostic tools for diagnosing various blood diseases. Anemia is a major public health problem worldwide, with high prevalence in developing countries like India1. Red blood cell count and histograms are essential for the diagnosis and management of anemia2. The most important diagnostic tool for testing in most commercial laboratories is the periodic analysis of blood lms. AIM: the aim of this study was to compare the role of automated cell count histograms and peripheral blood smear results in the diagnosis of anemia.. Material and method:A prospective comparative study of RBC histogram and peripheral blood smear in diagnosis of anemia was done on 900 patients of HB<14gm%, over two month time span(September 2022-October 2022) in the central laboratory lab, Department of pathology, Gajra Raja Medical College, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. All cases of anemia who received blood transfusions were excluded from this study. Result:It was observed in our study that on peripheral blood smears, the most common type of anemia was microcytic hypochromic anemia, followed by normochromic normocytic anemias. When we compared with the histogram generated by the automated cell counter, the most common type of anemia was hypochromic microcytic anemia, followed by normochromic normocytic anemia. In our study, the female population was more numerous than the males. The average age is (23 years old). Conclusion:CBC histograms and peripheral blood smears generated by automated cell counters play an important role in the diagnosis and management of red blood cell disorders. Our study observed that the histogram pattern and its conrmation by the peripheral blood smear along with the clinical medical history allow an accurate and conrmed diagnosis of various blood disorders. Accuracy and precision have been greatly improved resulting in reducing the subjective error3 .