Department of Hemobiology
Contributions
Type: Publication Only
Background
The platelet count is an important orienting test for clinicians to diagnose various pathologies and in the therapeutic monitoring of patients, this is why the accuracy of the results is essential and any measurement faults may leads the clinician to errors in the diagnostic and the treatment.
Aims
We tried to use the high precision of flow cytometry in the platelet count. In this respect we adapted a simple method and tried it.
Methods
We compared the platelet count obtained by flow cytometry based on red blood cells/platelet ratio with 2 automated hematology analyzers. : one with impedance principle and another with optical principle.
The flow cytometric count is performed after labeling platelets with specific monoclonal antibody (CD61), then the red cells/platelet events ratio is determined on a forward scatter/Fl1 cytogram and the platelet count is calculated from the number of red blood cells obtained precisely by an hematology analyzer.
A total of 105 blood samples were analyzed including 3 levels quality control: 45 samples with a normal platelet count, 29 samples with a low platelet count and 31 samples with a high platelet count.
Results
The correlation of the results of the platelet count obtained by the 3 methods is excellent for samples with normal and low platelet count. However the impedance hematology analyzer shows less accuracy in the high platelet count samples.
The stability of the flow cytometric platelet count over the time is good. The mean of the CV over the time is 08%, which is accepted in biological analysis.
Summary
Finally, we suggest using the flow cytometric platelet count as a gold standard since the other methods have a large margin of error and we need exactly results to manage thrombopenic patients.
Type: Publication Only
Background
The platelet count is an important orienting test for clinicians to diagnose various pathologies and in the therapeutic monitoring of patients, this is why the accuracy of the results is essential and any measurement faults may leads the clinician to errors in the diagnostic and the treatment.
Aims
We tried to use the high precision of flow cytometry in the platelet count. In this respect we adapted a simple method and tried it.
Methods
We compared the platelet count obtained by flow cytometry based on red blood cells/platelet ratio with 2 automated hematology analyzers. : one with impedance principle and another with optical principle.
The flow cytometric count is performed after labeling platelets with specific monoclonal antibody (CD61), then the red cells/platelet events ratio is determined on a forward scatter/Fl1 cytogram and the platelet count is calculated from the number of red blood cells obtained precisely by an hematology analyzer.
A total of 105 blood samples were analyzed including 3 levels quality control: 45 samples with a normal platelet count, 29 samples with a low platelet count and 31 samples with a high platelet count.
Results
The correlation of the results of the platelet count obtained by the 3 methods is excellent for samples with normal and low platelet count. However the impedance hematology analyzer shows less accuracy in the high platelet count samples.
The stability of the flow cytometric platelet count over the time is good. The mean of the CV over the time is 08%, which is accepted in biological analysis.
Summary
Finally, we suggest using the flow cytometric platelet count as a gold standard since the other methods have a large margin of error and we need exactly results to manage thrombopenic patients.