Ideal tonicity of RBC diluting fluids?

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Ideal tonicity of RBC diluting fluids?

Osmosis drives this choice. Red blood cells will swell and eventually burst when placed in a solution that is less concentrated (hypotonic) than their interior. In practice, when diluting blood to count white cells, you want to remove the red cells so they don’t crowd the field. A hypotonic diluent achieves this by lysing the red cells while largely preserving white cells for counting. If the diluent were isotonic, red cells would stay intact and interfere with the count; if it were hypertonic, red cells would shrink and distort the appearance. So the ideal diluting fluid is hypotonic to selectively lyse red blood cells.

Osmosis drives this choice. Red blood cells will swell and eventually burst when placed in a solution that is less concentrated (hypotonic) than their interior. In practice, when diluting blood to count white cells, you want to remove the red cells so they don’t crowd the field. A hypotonic diluent achieves this by lysing the red cells while largely preserving white cells for counting. If the diluent were isotonic, red cells would stay intact and interfere with the count; if it were hypertonic, red cells would shrink and distort the appearance. So the ideal diluting fluid is hypotonic to selectively lyse red blood cells.

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