Eosinophil Counts in Mucosal Biopsies of the Ileum and Colon: Interobserver Variance Affects Diagnostic Accuracy
Box 2
Instructions for participating pathologists. These instructions follow known procedures in identifying and counting eosinophils in human mucosa [10, 12, 13, 21, 22].
Intructions for Examination:
(i) The aim of this study is to count the maximum number of eosinophils per
HPF in the ileal, colonic, and rectal mucosa.
(ii) To do this, identify the 5 HPF with the highest number of eosinophils in
every slide, then count the eosinophils in each!
(iii) HPF must be located > 4 crypts from the next lymph follicle.
(iv) Do not count intravascular and / or degranulated eosinophils.
(v) Do count mucosal esoinophils that can clearly be identified by their
granula, even if their nucleus is out of focus or out of the cutting plane.