Research Results For 'Leucocytosis'

LEUCOCYTOSIS

Leucocytosis is the name given to a condition of the blood in which the leucocytes or white corpuscles in the blood plasma are increased in number. These leucocytes are minute protoplasmic cells, which have the power of movement and can pass out of the smallest capillary blood vessels into the surrounding tissues. They act as scavengers, and play an important part in the destruction and removal of bacteria in the body, a process known as phagocytosis.

The leucocytes are of different types, and normal blood contains a fairly constant proportion of each type. In infection or inflammation the leucocytes become greatly increased in number; the leucocytes which are killed in the attack on the bacteria form pus. In certain blood diseases, of which leukaemia is the best example, the increase is also often enormous, even reaching to 80,000 and 100,000 white corpuscles in a cubic millimetre of blood which normally contains only from 5,000 to 6,000. The symptoms of this disease are very similar to those of anaemia, and the diagnosis is confirmed by microscopic examination of the blood. The leukaemias are accompanied by swelling of the glands but this also occurs in other diseases.

A small increase of the white corpuscles is found in such a great number of the more common diseases that an examination of the blood is often made as a routine measure. In many cases, for instance, of appendicitis, the white corpuscles increase to from 15,000 to 20,000 per cubic millimetre; in pneumonia they also increase sometimes to 40,000 per cubic millimetre. In other more common diseases such as tonsilitis or sore throat, erysipelas, in smallpox, and inflammatory diseases such as septicaemia, boils, bone diseases and pyaemia, a greater or less increase is always found. In other diseases absence of an increase often enables the right diagnosis to be made, since in typhoid fever (which might in the early stages be mistaken for appendicitis) there would be no increase in the early stage of the disease, but it would probably be marked in the latter stages. In whooping-cough a marked leucocytosis occurs, which may confirm a doubtful diagnosis.
Research Leucocytosis

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