Well, I was confident that it was something malaria-ous and (quite
frankly) that’s good enough. I spotted the issue and was confident about
the next steps… tell the clinician and the London School of Tropical Medicine.
As for the species… I won’t say “that’s anyone’s guess” but I will
say “look at the last NEQAS parasitology result”. Out of nearly four
hundred and fifty participants, over ninety-nine point five per cent of the
participants saw something there that shouldn’t have been. However less than
half of the participants got the species right… I say “right”. Perhaps “agreed
with the expert opinion” might be a better phrasing.
I find myself thinking back to the good old days when leukaemias were
typed according to what they looked like down the microscope, and there being
as many opinions as there were people working that day at the (now
demolished) haematology lab of the Royal East Sussex Hospital.
Nowadays microscopy is just an add-on to flow cytometry and cytogenetics.
How long will it be before speciating will be done by something less
subjective than saying “I think it looks like…”
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