🩺 MEDLAB BOT AI • CLINICAL MLS MCQ
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📚 Specialty: Hematology & Clinical Microscopy (#HematologyampClinicalMicroscopy)
🎯 Difficulty: Intermediate
🔢 Item: #Q10
❓ QUESTION:
A peripheral blood smear from a 42-year-old patient with severe end-stage liver disease reveals normocytic RBCs with irregular, unevenly spaced, thorny, blunt projections across the cell membrane. Supravital staining is negative for inclusions. What cell morphology is described, and what is its primary pathophysiological mechanism?
A) Acanthocytes due to an altered membrane cholesterol-to-phospholipid ratio
B) Echinocytes due to hyperosmolar cellular dehydration
C) Codocytes due to increased surface area from intracellular hemoglobin accumulation
D) Dacrocytes due to mechanical shearing through splenic sinusoids
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✅ CORRECT ANSWER: Option A
💡 CLINICAL RATIONALE & DIAGNOSTIC PEARLS:
Acanthocytes (spur cells) have irregular, unevenly spaced, blunt projections caused by unesterified cholesterol accumulation in the outer membrane leaflet, altering the cholesterol-to-phospholipid ratio. This is commonly seen in severe liver dysfunction and abetalipoproteinemia. Echinocytes (burr cells) differ by having short, uniform, regularly spaced projections.
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📢 MedLab Bot AI • Official Clinical Series
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📚 Specialty: Hematology & Clinical Microscopy (#HematologyampClinicalMicroscopy)
🎯 Difficulty: Intermediate
🔢 Item: #Q10
❓ QUESTION:
A peripheral blood smear from a 42-year-old patient with severe end-stage liver disease reveals normocytic RBCs with irregular, unevenly spaced, thorny, blunt projections across the cell membrane. Supravital staining is negative for inclusions. What cell morphology is described, and what is its primary pathophysiological mechanism?
A) Acanthocytes due to an altered membrane cholesterol-to-phospholipid ratio
B) Echinocytes due to hyperosmolar cellular dehydration
C) Codocytes due to increased surface area from intracellular hemoglobin accumulation
D) Dacrocytes due to mechanical shearing through splenic sinusoids
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✅ CORRECT ANSWER: Option A
💡 CLINICAL RATIONALE & DIAGNOSTIC PEARLS:
Acanthocytes (spur cells) have irregular, unevenly spaced, blunt projections caused by unesterified cholesterol accumulation in the outer membrane leaflet, altering the cholesterol-to-phospholipid ratio. This is commonly seen in severe liver dysfunction and abetalipoproteinemia. Echinocytes (burr cells) differ by having short, uniform, regularly spaced projections.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📢 MedLab Bot AI • Official Clinical Series