A
colleague asked if I had a spare few minutes today… I did, and together we sat
and looked through a e-Haematimage case study.
I really
did enjoy doing it.
Morphology
EQA seems to follow the same format these days… someone at NEQAS HQ manages to
track down the most obscure case, provide us with rather poorly made and poorly
stained blood films, minimal clinical information and pretty much no laboratory
data whatsoever. From this we are supposed to guess whether we’ve got a case of
Bendii syndrome, xenopolycythaaemia or Andorian measles (forgive me if I
appear a tad frustrated).
But today’s
case was excellent. We were given full clinical information, full laboratory
data, and clear pictures of individual blood cells and of fields of a blood
film. Like we would be given in real life.
It turned
out that the case was one of Burkitt’s lymphoma. I learned a lot about that
specific condition (learned or remembered stuff I’d forgotten – not sure
which!) but it was so good to sit with someone and discuss the case. Was
that a blast cell? If yes, we said why it was. If no, we said why not. What is the
difference between a myelocyte and a promyelocyte? Why is that ?
I spend
so much time looking at blood films.. and pretty much all of that time is on my
own. Back in the day we used to have morphology workshops. I wonder if we might
have those again?
October 28, 2021
October 20, 2021
