Abstract
We present images (Figure 1A‐D) of a preterm girl who had severe anemia due to HDFN caused by maternal anti‐C and anti‐D alloantibodies. These images show erythrophagocytosis, which is a very interesting and rarely encountered feature. We believe that physicians taking care of such patients should be more aware of this characteristic yet under‐detected finding.
Keywords: erythrophagocytosis, HDFN, hemolytic anemia, hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn
The presence of erythrophagocytosis in the peripheral blood is rare and can easily be overlooked, and until now, only few sporadic reports describing it are present with the largest study done in 1950.1, 2 We present some elaborative blood smear images of a newborn with HDFN caused by maternal Rh‐related alloantibodies. (Figure 1A‐D).
Figure 1.
Peripheral blood smear showing significant number of nucleated red blood cells, with some erythroblasts seen (dotted black arrow). Additionally, red blood cells show moderate polychromasia and mild spherocytosis (small yellow arrows, D). Moreover, many histiocytes (bold red arrows) showing engulfed red cells (singleton: A, B; duplets: C), with fewer showing nucleated red cells (D) in their cytoplasm. Occasional left‐shifted myeloid precursors are also noted
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
None declared.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
RA: involved in literature review and paper writing. AAM: involved in literature review, image acquisition, and supervision of the paper writing.
Altahan R, Al Mugairi A. The unusual abundance of a rare finding! Clin Case Rep. 2019;7:1809–1810. 10.1002/ccr3.2291
REFERENCES
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