Introduction

It will be problematic if a physician sends just some cytologic slides to the laboratory without clinical information. In addition, even a well-trained cytologist can miss a diagnosis if specimens have poor quality. The purpose of this lecture is to introduce important points on requisition form, and major errors on slide preparation. These problems will be demonstrated by related cases with macroscopic and microscopic photographs. Issues of tissue sampling techniques will be talked in the other sessions of this conference.

Poor slide preparation

 Naked nuclei: High grade lymphoma

 Cell aggregates: Epithelial tumors

 Insufficient staining

 Low cellularity: Fusiform cell tumors

Insufficient information

 Gross morphology: Low grade lymphoma

 History: Sarcoma vs. granulation tissue

 Site: Thyroid carcinoma

 Age: Canine cutaneous histiocytoma vs. plasmacytoma

 Species: Dogs vs. cats in mastocytoma

Namba Veterinary Pathological Laboratory, Setagaya Kamiuma 4-2-9-1209, Tokyo, 154-0011, Japan, Email: BZG14356@nifty.com, Web page: http://homepage2.nifty.com/p-tuat-vet/namba/home.html