Question: How do you work out what is wrong with a sick person?

Sandra Phinbow answered on 13 Mar 2013:

Hi,

Usually when someone is sick and has symptoms, they will go to the docs. The docs will probably have some blood taken or maybe some other fluid. or maybe someone is in hosptial already because they are very ill. That sample will get sent to our dept.

When we receive it, we make checks to make sure the form is correct and the form matches the patient’s sample, and everything is correct.

One of the ways we can prepare a sample is to remove any excess fluid and just look at the cells. So we need to spin it on a centrifuge, which will seperate the fluid we don’t need (called supernatant) and just leave the clump of cells (called the deposit) at the bottom of the tube.

So we remove the supernatant, then add a little bit of preservative to the deposit, give it a quick mix. Then we centrifuge it again, this time we do it in a special chamber which contains a slide. What you are left with is a slide that has on it all the cells that were floating about inthe fluid. But they are concentrated into one area.

We then need to add some colour to the cells or you wouldnt be able to see them under the microscope.

ONce we’ve added colour we need to remove any fluid that might be in the cells left over from staining, so we dunk the slides in a tub of alchol, usually about 3 different concentrations, then we dunk them into a chemical called xylene. After we have completely dehrydrated the cells we can ‘mount’ it.

Mounting means to put on some special glue and stick a glass cover slip on the slide, this helps to protect the slide so the cells dont get scraped off or damaged, also it helps with no bending the light too much when on the microscope.

Then we’re ready to look at the cells.

And so we work out what is wrong with a patient buy looking at what is going on in their cells. What we look at is the DNA – we can see this in the cell nucleus. We look to see how it is sitting, how dark is is? How has it moved in the nucleus, if it is a bit clumpy, or is it regular and tidy. Also is the nucleus big? Is it filling up the whole of the cell, and at the same time how does the DNA look.

Some images of the cells can be found on here: http://www.cytologystuff.com/study/section3.htm