A FULLY AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF WHOLE BLOOD RED CELL COUNT AND HEMOGLOBIN CONTENT.

Abstract

Although various mechanical devices for counting the cellular elements of blood and for hematocrit and hemoglobin determinations are becoming increasingly useful in the clinical laboratory, their value lies more in their precision than in their over-all speed of determination. For the most part, the deterrents to over-all speed are the preliminary manual preparations of accurate dilutions of the samples, the selection of carefully calibrated glassware for making the dilutions, and the cleansing and maintenance of adequate supplies of such glassware. The intrinsic precision and speed of the mechanical device are often superior to those of the dilution procedures. The continuous flow automated instrument system, as originally described by Skeggs, has been adapted to a combined light scattering and electronic counting system in order to produce a fully automated cell counter. Parallel systems for red and white cell counts may be operated simultaneously from the same blood sample; a third system may also be added for hemoglobin determination. One technologist can operate the individual or combined systems at the rate of 40 samples per hr., thus making possible the simultaneous determination of the equivalent of 120 routine blood typing tests per hr. I t is the purpose of this communication to report on our evaluation of such a fully automated apparatus for red cell counting, combined with hemoglobin determination.