Presence of cold agglutinins will have what effect on automated hematology analyzers?

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Multiple Choice

Presence of cold agglutinins will have what effect on automated hematology analyzers?

Explanation:
Cold agglutinins cause red blood cells to bind together and form clumps at lower temperatures, which interferes with automated hematology analyzers. This clumping makes the machine undercount the number of individual RBCs, so the RBC count appears decreased. The clustering also makes the remaining interpreted cells seem larger, shifting the mean cell volume upward. Since hemoglobin level is typically preserved while the calculated hematocrit is affected by the undercounting and misread cell masses, the calculated mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration can appear elevated as well. Warming the sample to dissolve the aggregates and reanalyzing typically restores values toward the true ranges.

Cold agglutinins cause red blood cells to bind together and form clumps at lower temperatures, which interferes with automated hematology analyzers. This clumping makes the machine undercount the number of individual RBCs, so the RBC count appears decreased. The clustering also makes the remaining interpreted cells seem larger, shifting the mean cell volume upward. Since hemoglobin level is typically preserved while the calculated hematocrit is affected by the undercounting and misread cell masses, the calculated mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration can appear elevated as well. Warming the sample to dissolve the aggregates and reanalyzing typically restores values toward the true ranges.

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