The Journal of the Japanese Society of Clinical Cytology

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Objective : To determine the usefulness of preparation of sputum cytology smears using an automatic blood smearing device, the “Geometric HemaPrep” (HP).
Study Design : Sputum samples from 45 lung cancer patients were used. The HP created a smear on the slide of a sediment of the sputum sample dissolved by a sputum digestant. The 6-cm-long HP smear was divided into 32-cm-long areas, A, B, and C. By adjusting the speed of the HP's spreader from 0.5 to 4, the distribution of the cells on the slide and of the cancer cells in the 3 areas was examined. The cancer cell distribution in the HP-prepared smears was compared to that in conventionally prepared smears.
Results : When the speed of the spreader was increased from 0.5 to 2, the cells were spread in a thin layer. When the speed of the spreader was adjusted to 1.5, the number of cancer cells in area B of the HP smear increased by 104% as compared with that in the other areas. As compared with that in conventionally prepared smears, the number of cancer cells in area B of the HP smear was increased by 51%, and the number of cancer cells that appeared in area B of the HP smear showed a good within-run reproducibility (CV).
Conclusion : The HP method can concentrate cancer cells in area B and help decrease underdiagnosis on cytologic screening. Therefore, HP was found to be useful for the preparation of sputum cytology smears.

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