Question

Mention the important characteristics of a standard blood film slide with respect to its thickness and length. How can you judge if the slide has been prepared correctly/satisfactory?

Answer 1

A standard blood smear should have an ideal thickness. To make this you need to keep the spreader at an angle of 30-45 degree and make a uniform, smooth sliding motion. Increasing and decreasing the angle as well as increasing and decreasing the speed of the motion affect the thickness of the smear. (to see if the smear has ideal thickness ,you should be able to easily read a newspaper through it as some book says. But better method to assess the thickness of a smear is to look it under oil immersion microscope and look at the RBCs. they should be touching each other or little bit apart in the body of the smear. RBCs shouldn't be clumped or too far in the body region)

Ideal length of the smear would be around 2/3^rd to 3/4^th of the slide . More than half of it should be body part. ( a smear has 3 regions, head- the thick beginning part, body- middle ideal part to see and count cells, and tail- the thin and last part)

also remember, there shouldn't be any irregularities or windows in the smear.