Anemia and the CBC
In honor of Dr. @AmeetRKini's anemia lecture today, I thought I'd share a little #hemebytes #micromeded #twitterhomework #tweetorial
Let's first look at the CBC RBC indices!
Why are immature RBCs more polychromatic? Well, here is a review of RBC maturation. As you can see, after the RBC loses its nucleus, the cytoplasm remains more basophilic due to higher levels of ribosomal RNA which looks more purple on the Giemsa stain —>
Now, there is another little index on the CBC that no one really talks about (probably because there isn't a ton of data on how to properly use it). Here is a figure on the mean platelet volume. The MPV is really most useful in thrombocytopenia... the rest is to be determined
And now for my pride and joy. I always find that there are a bunch of figures that have bits and pieces of what I want in a normocytic anemia algorithm but not all in one place, so I made this little guy to help guide the diagnosis of normocytic anemia.
Don't forget about the iron transport and metabolism #micromeded #flashback to the "Battle Over Iron" post (access that post here)
Hopefully, I will be able to make more posts about microcytic and macrocytic anemias in the future (if I ever get the time to sit down and make the figures). For now, that's all I have. See you next time! #micromeded #hemebytes
