Bone marrow aspirate collection and preparation--a comparison of three methods.

PURPOSE: Preparing bone marrow smears using non-anticoagulated bone marrow aspirate is a traditional practice but many laboratories now use anticoagulated aspirate samples in K-EDTA. There are no published studies comparing the effectiveness of these two methods. This report compares the readability of slides, prepared using non-anticoagulated and anticoagulated methods, from three laboratories in Hamilton Ontario. METHODS: A blinded set of 129 …