Anisocytosis
Encyclopedia
Anisocytosis is a medical term meaning that a patient's red blood cells are of unequal size. This is found in anemia
Anemia
Anemia is a decrease in number of red blood cells or less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood. However, it can include decreased oxygen-binding ability of each hemoglobin molecule due to deformity or lack in numerical development as in some other types of hemoglobin...

 and other blood conditions. False diagnostic flagging may be triggered by an elevated WBC count, agglutinated RBCs, RBC fragments, giant platelets or platelet clumps.

The red cell distribution width (RDW) is a measurement of anisocytosis and is calculated as a coefficient of variation of the distribution of RBC volumes divided by the mean corpuscular volume (MCV
Mean corpuscular volume
The mean corpuscular volume, or "mean cell volume" , is a measure of the average red blood cell size that is reported as part of a standard complete blood count....

)

Increased RDW is seen in iron deficiency anemia
Iron deficiency anemia
Iron-deficiency anemia is a common anemia that occurs when iron loss occurs, and/or the dietary intake or absorption of iron is insufficient...

, Thalassemia
Thalassemia
Thalassemia is an inherited autosomal recessive blood disease that originated in the Mediterranean region. In thalassemia the genetic defect, which could be either mutation or deletion, results in reduced rate of synthesis or no synthesis of one of the globin chains that make up hemoglobin...

 Major (Cooley's anemia), Thalassemia Intermedia and myelodysplastic syndromes
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