New York State Department of Health - Wadsworth Center - Cytohematology Proficiency Testing

Slide 015 [100X]

This specimen was taken from a patient diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia with a white blood cell count of 48.0 X 10³/µL. The cell was a classic hairy cell which demonstrated hair-like projections of the cytoplasm. This case was used as a proficiency testing slide in the 1990-91 proficiency testing year. Acceptable responses for this slide were hairy cell (code 08) or blast cell present, but not classified (code 01). This slide was misidentified by 9 laboratories as an atypical lymphocyte (code 52) and one laboratory each misidentified this cell as myelocyte (code 44), smudge cell (code 34) and normal lymphocyte (code 48).

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