This week's case is in honor of @JMGardner who showed a beautiful example of this finding a little while ago. This one is not quite as good, but still diagnostic. The digital slide can be viewed HERE. This is a low power view:
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4 comments:
Engorged tick with hypostome visible in dermis of biopsied subject.
What an enigma, as medical technologists working in Parasitology we are at best taught to identify ticks to the genus level. We need to examine the anal groove, the shield, the palpi, the basi capitulum ., etc. Here we find a “minced” fat tick totally “disemboweled “. What a difficult CSI. On the positive side, we will have a great learning opportunity, let the experts shed a light on our forever hungry brain.
Florida Fan
I would go one step further and say that this is a female ixodid tick as one can see the scutum (dorsal shield), which only takes up about 1/3 of the body (therefor a female) and the tick appears to be attached and engorged (male ticks feed intermittently and cannot engorge to that level because of the size of their scutum).
editing my above comment - the scutum takes up abut 1/3 of the body in the unengorged female - less in this engorged example.
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