Correlation between the percentages of myeloblasts in bone marrow obtained by flow cytometry and manual counting on glass slide smears in 74 hematologic patients

To investigate reliability of calculating percentage of myeloblasts by flow cytometric method, data were obtained from 74 hematologic patients (76 paired data). Myeloblast counts obtained by manual count versus flow cytometry were compared. Our data show that the percentage of myeloblasts in the bone marrow obtained with flow cytometric method correlates well with manual count (correlation coefficient is 0.9912). A very high correlation coefficient means that reliable percentage of myeloblasts in the bone marrow can be obtained by either method alone. Flow cytometry is a useful adjunct (or quality control) to validate manual myeloblast count and vice versa.