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Sysmex does not offer a sepsis protocol. I was disappointed to find out that Beckman's sepsis indicator is only FDA approved for adult patients in the ED and requires a monthly subscription fee.

We are in the market for new cell counters. We are currently using the Beckman Coulter DxH 800's . We have the SMS and the Cellavision. We haven't been using the slidemaker/ stainer as a stainer because of the maintenance (we use a small Aerospray with great results). Our choice is narrowed down to the DxH 900 and the Sysmex XN 3100. Can anyone offer any input? We are especially interested in maintenance on the Sysmex stainer, platelet accuracy, and overall support. We have also been told that the Sysmex analyzers vote out the MPV frequently. Thanks in advance for your input.

Currently we are running our coag q.c. every 6 hours to ensure that we are not late. This is quite wasteful and we would like to run q.c. every 8 hours (as required). Any ideas on how to make sure q.c. is not getting run too late (after the 15 minute window). We use the ACL TOP 350's and I thought there was a way to hold results if q.c. had not been run but apparently I was mistaken. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I put a few drops of sterile saline in a tube and add fluid until it is barely hazy. Use one or two drops of this to make the cytospin (no albumin unless it's CSF). It seems to work every time.

We currently perform post vas sperm presence and report our results as number of sperm seen per HPF and make a note if the sperm were motile or non motile. The American Urological Association states that a vasectomy is successful if less than 100,000 sperm/mL are seen. Does anyone have any idea how to convert sperm per HPF to sperm per mL? We could use a hemocytometer but numbers are usually so low that doesn't seem logical.

We perform manual body fluid crystal analysis using the polarizer on our scopes. We are having a terrible time pleasing our Orthopedic doctors. They question our results frequently and we are doing a ton of corrected reports. We currently require two techs to review each slide before resulting. Does anyone know of a better method or some good training material? This has been a problem for us for many years.

Thank you!

We correlate manual diff to automated diff every six months. This also serves as competency for the techs.

We are long term STA Compact users who are in the market for new coag instrumentation. We have narrowed our choices down to the Stago Compact Max or the IL ACL TOP. Has anyone used both? Any input is greatly appreciated.

Scott, do you have a reference for this method of saline replacement? I can't seem to find one. Thank you!

Does anyone still perform manual platelet counts? We very rarely do them and I am trying to convince my Pathologist that we can discontinue them. Seems kind of antiquated.

Is it necessary to run a separate body fluid control on a DxH800? We have always just used our 6 C controls and a background count before running a fluid sample. It appears that Beckman Coulter only recommends a daily background done in the body fluid mode.

Thank you!

Thank you Scott. Then you use all parameters from the saline replaced specimen?

Can someone share their process for performing saline replacement on lipemic patients. Our method is outdated and I can't find a reference for it. Thank you!

What is best practice for performing a CBC on a patient with a severe cold agglutinin? Currently we have a patient who requires saline replacement with warmed saline to obtain results. The typical saline replacement calculations do not work because of the agglutinated RBC's. Any suggestions?

We are having an issue reporting out grossly blood urines. Techs tend to call everything "indeterminate" which I feel is unacceptable. We have, in the past, been taught to put a drop of urine on a glass slide with a coverslip but then there is the problem of quantitating. How are other labs handling this?