What Is Haematology?

Haematology is a specialist study of blood illnesses and diseases. It is the branch of internal medicine (dealing with conditions of the organs) concerned with the study of the cause, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood.

 It involves treating diseases that affect the production of blood and its components, such as red blood cells, haemoglobin, blood/plasma proteins, bone marrow, platelets, blood vessels, spleen, lymph glands and other lymph tissue, spleen and the mechanism of coagulation (also known as clotting).

Because there is blood and lymph tissue in almost every organ in the body, haematological conditions can affect literally any tissue of organ in the body.

Such diseases might include haemophilia, blood clots, other bleeding disorders and blood cancers such as leukaemia, myeloma (another type of bone marrow cancer), and lymphoma. The laboratory work that goes into the study of blood is frequently performed by a medical technologist or medical laboratory scientist, supervised by a haematopathologist.

Some haematologists work as haematologist-oncologists, also providing medical treatment for other types of cancer. The term is from the Greek words, haima meaning "blood," and "logia" meaning study.

SPECIALIZATION

Physicians specialized in haematology are known as haematologists.

Their routine work mainly includes physical examination, the diagnoses, care and treatment of patients with haematological diseases, although some may also work at the haematology laboratory viewing blood films and bone marrow slides under the microscope, interpreting various haematological test results and blood clotting test results.