Automated blood counts and identification of thalassemia carriers.

Sir, I read the article by Kakkar et al., with great excitement.[1] The authors emphasize that clinicians overlook the red cell abnormalities on automated blood counts and also misinterpret the abnormal red cell parameters (they either do not carry out further evaluation for excluding thalassemia or misinterpret microcytosis as iron deficiency). This situation was also brought to the attention of the medical community by other authors.[2]