Got a Question about Blood Tests?

[andrewschorr]

My favorite person, Dr. Susan Leclair, a highly respected blood laboratory expert form the US, will be our LIVE guest on an upcoming webinar where you can ask questions and hear the answers right away on video. We are self funding this with the international organization of laboratory scientists. Since rarely do doctors and nurses have or take the time to explain your test and lab results, this is your chance to get questions answered. Here's the link to more info. More than 100 people are signed up right now but we have plenty of room. Let's get a bigger audience and then I can shop for sponsorship so we can do this often! patientpower.info/series/li...

[AussieNeil Administrator]

For those that have watched Dr Susan Leclair's explanation of red blood cell index tests (MCH, MCV and RDW):

patientpower.info/series/as... , here's an article from this month's Hematology Times (not CLL related) on how the RDW value can predict ill health:

hematologytimes.com/p_artic...

'New research suggests that increased red blood cell distribution width (RDW) is caused by reduced clearance of aging red blood cells (RBCs) from the bloodstream.

And previous studies showed that elevations in RDW predict the development, progression, and risk of death from many conditions.

“It appears that the human body slightly slows down the production and destruction of red blood cells in just about every major disease,” said John Higgins, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“If we can accurately measure the production or destruction rates, we might be able to identify many of these diseases in their earlier stages when they are most treatable. Existing measures of the production rate are far too imprecise to detect these subtle changes, but this paper shows how the destruction rate can be estimated using existing blood count data and a mathematical model.” '

Neil