MLT Matt

Certified [MDxT/MT(AAB), MLS(ASCP)] and licensed Medical Technologist. All views are my own.

[mltmatt]

Neutrophils with “Critical Green Inclusions”

[mltmatt]

Bacteria present in the blood smear of a septic patient.

[garden-of-everything]

[matty1026]

Patient came in with over a 450 WBC count. When a differential was performed it was 96% blasts.

[mltmatt]

Lipid crystals in synovial fluid viewed under compensated polarized light.

[mltmatt]

[mltmatt]

Happy Medical Laboratory Professionals Week!

[mltmatt]

Urine Wright Stain with bacteria and segmented neutrophils.

[currentsinbiology]

 Spinning toy reinvented as low-tech centrifuge

Growing up in India, Manu Prakash entertained himself with a bottle cap that spun around on two strings that he tugged with his fingers. As a physical biologist at Stanford University in California, he is now transforming that simple toy, called a whirligig, into a cheap tool to help diagnose diseases such as malaria.

Prakash started this project, the results of which are published on 10 January in Nature Biomedical Engineering1, after a research trip to Uganda in 2013. While visiting health-care clinics, he noticed that most lacked a working centrifuge — or the electricity to power one — and could not separate blood samples to perform basic disease diagnostics.

“One clinic used its broken centrifuge as a doorstop,” says Prakash, a 2016 MacArthur ‘genius grant’ winner who has also invented a foldable paper microscope2. “When we got back from Africa we asked ourselves, ‘Can we do centrifugation with no electricity, using only human power?’

A paper centrifuge, capable of separating out parasites like malaria from blood samples, in action. Stanford News/Kurt Hickman

[mltmatt]

Medical detectives raced to save a man from a rare, ‘universally lethal’ disease

Within hours of diagnosis, a medicine stockpiled only at the CDC was flown to Baltimore to treat African sleeping sickness.

[mltmatt]

Antibiotic susceptibility testing

[rabbitlord]

Is that novobiocin?

[mltmatt]

Yes, novobiocin is on the right and bacitracin is on the left. Unfortunately, I don't remember the zone sizes to determine susceptibility.

[mltmatt]

A patient with CLL.

[mltmatt]

[mltmatt]

It’s hard to see in the photos, but this patient has Babesia microti (the purple inclusions in the red cell).

Babesia microti is a malaria-like parasite that infects red blood cells. The parasite is transmitted by ticks.

This can easily be confused with malaria, so travel history should be gathered from the patient. This patient traveled to New England.

[mltmatt]

Got some slightly better pictures showing the inclusion. 

[mltmatt]

It’s hard to see in the photos, but this patient has Babesia microti (the purple inclusions in the red cell).

Babesia microti is a malaria-like parasite that infects red blood cells. The parasite is transmitted by ticks.

This can easily be confused with malaria, so travel history should be gathered from the patient. This patient traveled to New England.

[mltmatt]

New Analyzers!

[mad-scientist]

[msbuglady]

Apparently @msbuglady has worked too long in the lab. :-) Great list!!!