Do you love this as much as I do? 😍 The beauty of intracellular bacteria

I never get tired of seeing intracellular bacteria inside neutrophils.

When we see intracellular bacteria, we can confirm there is true infection. This is as opposed to extracellular bacteria-- when we only see bacteria outside of the cell, we have to consider that it could just be contaminant.

Intracellular bacteria can be more significant in some clinical scenarios versus others.

For example, if we saw this in an impression smear from an ulcerated skin mass, it might just be surface inflammation/infection and not represent what's causing the mass.

Versus if we saw this in an abdominal effusion-- then we're dealing with a septic abdomen, which is a big deal!