Evaluation of semi-automated cells counting in peritoneal fluid Avaliação de semiautomação para contagem de células em líquido peritoneal

Introduction: Currently, the cytological analysis of biological fluids, such as peritoneal fluid, is performed by manually cells counting in Fuchs-Rosenthal chamber. However, this method has a number of limitations. Because of these limitations, automatic counters have been evaluated for cell counting in this type of sample in order to make it faster and more reliable test. Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the manual and semi-automated leukocytes and erythrocytes counting in peritoneal fluid. Materials and methods: The samples were analyzed manually and using the CountessTM (Invitrogen). Results: The results showed that although there is a correlation between the two counting methods, the correlation is relatively low, for both leukocytes and erythrocytes analysis. Conclusion: The results suggest that peritoneal fluid should continue to be analyzed in Fuchs-Rosenthal chamber. However, further studies should be conducted with a greater number of samples to investigate the possibility of using automated cells counting in serous fluids and, thus, provide greater speed and quality of results.