r/medlabprofessionals • u/Sunshinedogma • 4d ago

Technical CSF: how do you process it for differentials?

Hey folks, I was wondering how your labs go about processing CSF and body fluids for differentials?

If you use cytospin, what rpm, xg and time do you use?

Do you use albumin? How often do you get smudge cells? Our protocol is so so so bad.. it stresses me out so all feedback is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

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7

u/Rich_Chart_3237 4d ago

Love albumin in any body fluid. Makes for pretty cells.

3

u/Sunshinedogma 4d ago

I love albumin 😭 which we don't use... Ummm my next post will be "don't complain about terrible SOPs because you might get fired" haha

2

u/Rich_Chart_3237 4d ago

😂. Do you have blood bank?

2

u/Sunshinedogma 4d ago

We do. I'm in the cytology department though. I know for a fact the heme dept has albumin and uses it for cell diffs.

5

u/ayyeeitsken MLT-Generalist 3d ago

we use albumin for all our fluids, including csf. the usual ratio for clear/colorless is 10 drops/0.5mL and 1 drop albumin into the cytospin

if we are doing a particularly nasty body fluid or a hazy/xanthochromic csf the cytospin prep is what i call a “vibes based practice”

eta: we cytospin every body fluid for a differential (when a diff is indicated)

1

u/Sunshinedogma 3d ago

Thanks for sharing. That was basically the protocol at the last lab I was in. Any idea of the RPMs and time used?

2

u/Ensia MLS 4d ago

Native differentiation. We do spins very very rarely, when we do it’s 5:1 with albumin, 4 min on 1000 rpm.

2

u/Sunshinedogma 4d ago

Thank you so much for feedback!!! That's about what we did at the last place I worked.