Comparative study in the diagnosis of anemia by Sysmex KX-21N hematology analyzer with peripheral blood smear

Abstract In this era, automated peripheral blood count for the diagnosis of anemia is widely accepted in routine practice. Despite the sophistication of present day instruments, there is still need to depend on manual microscopic scan of peripheral blood smear for the diagnosis and appropriate treatment of different types of anemia. Also, the correlation between automated hematology analyzer and manual microscopic scan is rare and conflicting. Hence, the present study was designed to demonstrate a procedure that, the uses of manual scan is to validate rather than to replace automation. The benefit of manual microscopic scan is the ability to identify clinically significant cell type that are not quantifiable by instruments as it “flags” on such type of cells. Therefore, automated hematology analyzer are as reliable as standard manual scan, even though the latter gives additional diagnostic information through blood pictures and less imprecision and technical error over automation. Patient care and lab operations could be optimized as a validation procedure rather than as a reflexive substitute. Hence manual microscopic scan is still gold standard in the diagnosis and classification of anemia and other blood disorders. Whereas usage of automated method would ease our workload and save time for patients. Link: http://aeirc-edu.com/ojs14/index.php/IJEHSR/article/view/41/28