Curious about diagnosis

[Kittykat97]

Hello! My father was diagnosed with CLL after going to the ER for an unrelated issue. My question is, can you be diagnosed from only blood work?

[Ladylin151]

A very strong educated guess can be made from that along with a physical exam and list of symptoms. My husband was diagnosed in the ER while admitted for something else. There were other tests to sort it all out because he had other concerns as well, but a young "whippersnapper" rather gleefully reported that he was sure he knew what the diagnosis was. Remember the word "chronic";there is likely time to take a breath and choose a path. I wish you and your father well.

[SofiaDeo]

Hi, you have posted in an inactive forum. Please join the active "CLL Support". It's UK based but people from all over the world are there, many from the US and a number from Hawaii also. You can join, do a search, and read about many many people who have posted about the V&O journey, some even these past few weeks if you just start scrolling backwards. There are a lot of Pinned Posts explaining many things about CLL and the various treatments. I was a former oncology pharmacist, who now has CLL, and IMO it's one of the best resources for our rare disease on the planet.

To answer your question, no, one can't get a definitive diagnosis from testing available in the ER. It may be "presumptive diagnosis" based on an extremely high lymphocyte count, but it's ridiculous IMO that a pathologist would state a patient had CLL from looking at the blood on a slide, and fromm a CBC with differential numbers. Let alone an ER physician attempting to diagnose this, a hematologist-oncologist would be the one. I presented with an elevated lymphocyte count, and it took several types of tests to differentiate my chronic leukemia from an acute one. Plus, part of the diagnosis is "elevated lymphocyte count for more than 3 months", which is impossible from a single set of tests. Defining CLL from various other lymphocyte abnormalities takes a specialized set of tests that only specialized labs do, the blood has to be shipped out, and it takes a little time (a few weeks) for results to come back.

[robertp129]

Most likely yes. Keep in mind there are excellent treatments for CLL.