Self Instructional Manual for Cancer Registrars - SEER - National ...

Certain types of disease associated with the abnormality of blood cells are:
Anemia - Deficiency in erythrocytes or hemoglobin
Aplastic anemia - A form of anemia in which there is a lack of formation of blood cell
elements in the bone marrow
Leukemia - A progressive, malignant disease of the blood and blood-forming organs
characterized by uncontrolled proliferation and development of
leukocytes. It is diagnosed by microscopic detection of abnormal cells
in the circulating blood and in the bone marrow.
Leukocytosis - An increase in the number of leukocytes in the blood
Leukopenia - Reduction in the number of leukocytes in the blood
Polycythemia - Excessive number of erythrocytes
Thrombocytopenia - Decrease in the number of blood platelets
Therefore, you can see that the hematology report contains information which the cancer registrar
must abstract for leukemias and polycythemia vera.
PRACTICAL
EXERCISES
The examination findings from three routine hematology reports, each using a different format,
are demonstrated on the following pages (Examples E17-E19).
Example El7 is a routine form using the abbreviations RBC and WBC instead of writing out
erythrocytes and leukocytes. You also may not be familiar with the term "lymphoblast" which means
an immature lymphocyte. As a check that you have abstracted the correct values, add the various
leukocyte percentages to see if they equal 100%. For example, in Example E17 the differential 1
white count is as follows:
Leukocytes Percent
Neutrophils 69
Lymphoblasts 23
Monocytes 6
Eosinophils 1
Basophils
1__
100%
ldifferential--In performing the blood count, a total of 100 cells are counted. The percent of each type found
in these 100 cells is the cell "differential" for each type.
99