Friday, June 14, 2013

Answer to Case 262

Answer:  Ciliocytophthoria

I thought that Stedman's Medical Dictionary (Copyright © 2006 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) gave a nice definition for this entity: 

"Detached ciliary tufts (remnants of ciliated epithelium) seen in a variety of body fluids, especially peritoneal, amnionic, and respiratory specimens; they are motile and can be confused with ciliated or flagellated protozoa."


As per anonymous, "The common cytology classical name for the larger groups is creola body and they are said to be typical of asthma which I would take with a grain of salt."  I always loved seeing creola bodies in cytology preparations.  I agree about the association with asthma; it may be commonly seen, but I don't know if anyone has done a study on the sensitivity and specificity of this finding with asthma, and you might also see creola bodies with other inflammatory conditions.

Thank you all for the comments!

Now here is a fun little poem from Blaine Mathison:
(He acknowledges that it isn't entirely anatomically correct)
 
There once was a man from Andorra
who had a case of ciliocytophthoria!
From the depths of his lung,
to the tip of his tongue,
they’re dancing the hora with his respiratory flora

No comments: