Typical routine blood tests include the complete blood count, also called CBC, to measure your red and white blood cell numbers as well as hemoglobin and other numbers. This test can uncover anemia, infection, and even cancer of the blood.
Another common blood test is the basic metabolic panel to check your heart, kidney and liver function by looking at your blood glucose, calcium, and electrolyte levels. And to check for heart disease risk, you may have a lipoprotein panel that measures levels of fats in your blood, like good cholesterol (HDL), bad cholesterol (LDL), and triglycerides.
Here are 10 things that your doctor may not tell you about results of blood tests like these, unless you digging deep enough.
Doctors often Tells only Bad News.
Your doctor should discuss all blood test results with you. But often the rule is, “No news is good news." If your CBC, blood chemistry, and cholesterol results fall within normal ranges, the doctor’s office probably won’t reach out to you about your report. Or they may send you a copy with little or no explanation. Even if things appear normal, be sure to follow up and discuss your blood test with your doctor, nurse practitioner, or nurse.
Make sure you ask if there have been changes since the last test of the same type, and what those changes mean.
What’s Considered “Normal” Differs Between Men and Women and Children.
If you compare your blood test results with someone elses, you might be surprised to find differences. For example, the normal reference range for the number of red blood cells in a complete blood count, or CBC test, is between 5 million and 6 million cells per microliter for a man. The normal range is lower for women before menopause, between 4 million and 5 million, likely because of blood loss during menstruation.
The range for children also differs from the adult as their Alkaline Phosphatase range will be much higher. Their CBC range also differs.
Results Can Mean Different Things Depending on Your Age.
Normal levels of hemoglobin, part of the CBC test, vary by age — lower for children and higher for adults. For children, a hemoglobin level of 11 to 13 grams/deciliter (g/dL) is normal, while for men, a value of 13.0 to 18.0 g/dL is normal, and it's 11.5 to 16.5 g/dL for adult women.
Age matters for your cholesterol numbers, too. While most people should aim for LDL cholesterol levels below 3.8 mmol/L, levels of 2.6 mmol/L or above point to a risk for heart disease are riskier if you are a man over 45 or a woman over 55.
A “Positive” test result May Not Really Be Positive
Some blood tests look for diseases by searching for molecular markers in your blood sample — among them the sickle cell anemia test, the HIV test, the hepatitis C test, and the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene test for breast and ovarian cancer risk. Results are considered “positive” when the test finds the disease marker — DNA or protein — that it is looking for. In these cases, a positive test result means you may have the disease or disorder or that you may have been exposed to it in the past.
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| HIV Positive! |
False VDRL positive result and False HIV positive result can be found if a person is having autoimmune disorder such as Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). A secondary test or a confirmation test are needed to confirm such cases.
False-Positive test results Happen More Often than You Might Think.
The first screening test for a condition often has to be checked by a second, more specific test to find out whether the results are accurate and meaningful for your health. An example is the rapid HIV test, for which false positives are common. In communities where about 1 percent are infected with the virus, two false positive HIV rapid test results are expected for every 10 true positive results, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A follow up confirmation test call HIV Western Immunoblot Assay is commonly use to confirm the disease.
Although mix-ups of patient blood test samples are rare, they do happen.
A “Negative” test result is Usually Good News.
Negative is not the same as bad when it comes to blood tests. A negative result means that the test did not detect what it was seeking, whether a disease marker or a risk factor for a health condition. When you’ve had a blood test to check for an infectious disease — a rapid blood test for hepatitis C, for example — getting back a negative result is good news — it means the test found no evidence of an infection.
False-Negative test results Do Happen too.
Sometimes a test doesn’t pick up evidence of a disease or condition even though you actually do have it. For example, if you had a blood test for hepatitis C and the results came back negative, but you were exposed to the virus in the past few months, you could still have an infection and not realize it.
As for Hepatitis B carrier, sometime your blood screening result shows that you have no Hepatitis B infection. This might make people confuse that I'm "Clear" from the infection, but often, it is not. This happen very often especially your Hepatitis B virus has undergoes sero-conversion or in other words: Mutated Gene. Bear in mind that a Hepatitis B infection usually last for life and it is not common to clear from the infection.
Getting tested again is a good idea, recommends nurse Lucinda K. Porter, RN, if you think you were recently exposed to this infectious disease and make sure you inform the lab about your condition.
Test Values can be Different from Lab to Lab.
Lab technicians’ reports compare your blood test results to a range that is considered normal for that laboratory. The lab’s reference range is based on test results from many people previously tested in that lab. This normal range may not be the same as another lab’s, notes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so don’t be surprised if you find that a prior blood test report varies from newer reports — the difference could be in the lab.
Abnormal Results Might Not be Due to a Disease, It may just Something Else.
A test result outside the normal range of expected lab values could lead to diagnosis of a disease or disorder. But test outcomes can also be abnormal for other reasons. If you had a blood glucose test and you ate something before the test, or were drinking alcohol the night before or taking certain medications, your result could be temporarily abnormal.
If you go for a morning exercises and have your CPK testing after that, then you may found your CPK level is higher than normal. Same thing goes to your CRP test. A lipaemic serum also will make your result abnormal as it affects the reading of the machine.
Lastly, Mistakes do Happen.
Although mix-ups of patient blood test samples are rare, they do happen, like in the case of an HIV patient's sample that was switched with another person's, accidentally, as reported on ABC News. How your blood sample is handled even before it's analyzed can affect results, too. For example, if the technician shakes your blood sample in the collection tube, blood cells break open, releasing their contents and potentially changing the test results.
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