Blood Smear and Diagnosis of Anaemia in Children: Experience of the Hematology Laboratory of the Avicenna Hospital in Rabat with Review of the Literature

摘要

The discovery of anemia in children requires a rigorous approach to determine its etiology. This approach is essentially based on the biological analysis of the haemogram and the blood smear. The aim of our study is to demonstrate the vital interest of the blood smear in the diagnosis of anemia in children and to sensitize clinicians and biologists to the value of an adequate interpretation of the blood count. It is indeed a prospective study conducted at the Department of Pediatrics in collaboration with the Central Hematology Laboratory of the Ibn Sina University Hospital in Rabat, from May to July 2019. This study involved 100 cases of anemic infants and children who underwent a blood count and a blood smear. Childhood anaemia is predominantly male (56%), the most represented age group is between 1 month and 5 years (34%), according to the Hb rate, moderate anaemia is the most frequent (51%), the type of anaemia most found is 10%, the most common hue abnormality is the presence of annulocytes (37%), the anomalies of the are diverse but the most dominant are the presence of schizocytes (81%) followed by elliptocytes (68%), only basophilic wells are present as intraerythrocytic inclusions (1%). Our results are consistent with those in the literature and illustrate the vital interest of the hematologist in the diagnosis of the child.