Modified CMI, an essential adjunct to CMI of platelet for quality control during preparation and storage of platelet concentrates.

Changes in platelet indices such as platelet count (PLT), mean platelet volume (MPV) and corrected morphological index (CMI) have been correlated with the quality of platelet concentrates during storage but the acceptability criteria for these is not clearly defined. Platelet distribution width (PDW) is a measure of platelet anisocytosis and together with the MPV provides an adjunctive measure of quality. Hence, we investigated the use of the MPV and PDW with and without EDTA in an assessment of the quality of stored platelet concentrates. The differences in platelet count (dPLT), in MPV (dMPV) and in PDW (dPDW) with and without EDTA incubation were calculated. CMI and the modified CMI were further derived using dPLT, dMPV, and dPDW by simple mathematical calculations. We observed a good correlation of the CMI and modified CMI (r=0.966, p<0.01). The dPDWs underwent significant changes during the storage period in addition to changes in dPLT and dMPV. The dPDW provides a test of good power when compared with the dMPV (R(2)=64.1 and 26.1 respectively). We have observed an increment of 92.76% in the dPDW while it was 71% in the dMPV. This clearly shows that the dPDW is a better marker of quality control when compared to the dMPV during processing and storage of platelet concentrates.