I am wondering if anyone can Help me to try and understand what is going on with my blood test results. I have always had low ferritin in single figures and after years of low B12 I was eventually in March 21 put on B12 injections every 3 months for life .
The ferritin improved slowly but my Hematologist said that this was nothing to do with the B12 injections. I can not tollerate iron supplements and my diet has not changed.
in August 22 strange things started happening with my results, My Haemoglobin and Haematocrit went above the recommended range. My Hematologist said he would keep an eye on it. He said he was not concerned but if the Haematocrit went above 0.48 he would be.
its been slowly rising along with the ferritin and Haemoglobin . My blood results came
back this week and the Haematocrit is now 0.471. I am also having some new symptoms including blurred vision in the morning and my face and hands keep going red and flushed and suffering from fatigue .
I left a message for my not so helpful Hematologist to tell him about the Haematocrit result almost being in his range and the symptoms and he came back with the standard reply that he is not worried with those symptoms.
I did a quick search on Google and found out that those symptoms where common with patients with High Haematocrit levels.
I am starting to wonder why I have blood tests if they do not do anything with the results
Does anyone have any experience with this that might help me make some sense of things
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B52s
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Hello! Do you have any more labs to post, along with their ranges? The range is the two numbers listed next to your results that indicate the lab's minimum and maximum's values considered "normal". It is difficult to interpret results without these.
Haemochromatosis is a disease in which iron levels build up, so in theory yes your labs should help figure out if this is the case. nhs.uk/conditions/haemochro... It also runs in families - do you know if any of your relatives have this?
Your doctor is right in that B12 injections will not affect iron levels in this way.
I'm sorry but that's about it for my knowledge of iron related issues. Perhaps others will have some ideas. Please remember this is a B12 group, despite the word 'anemia' in pernicious anemia, so in general our knowledge of iron will not be extensive. And none of us are medically trained though we do have a few scientists here.
Or try the thyroid group - if i remember correctly radd knows about iron, so you could tag them. To tag someone, type their name so: @radd and then you should get a dropdown box, you have to click it to activate the tag. You will have to make the post on the thyroid group.
B52s sorry i just saw you're not on the thyroid group. The group really is for thyroid issues but perhaps they would be able to help anyway or perhaps streer you to another appropriate group. Here is their forum healthunlocked.com/thyroiduk
Haemochromatosis is a condition where the body lacks the ability to moderate Iron absorption, so the patient simply continues to absorb whether it's needed or not. Then it's stored, and there's no simple may of getting rid of the excess, short of regular blood loss. Otherwise it can lead to 'Iron Overload'.
Serum Iron & TIBC are better than Ferritin in this case, given that Ferritin is an acute phase reactant and can go up & down due to other things.
Haemachromatosis is very unlikely to result in a raised Haematocrit and/or Hb however. There are other systems that control the extent to which the Hb rises; Erythropoietin mediates this. It's [in my opinion] beyond the scope of this group for me to start rambling on about that!
There are other potential causes of a raised Haematocrit, which really need the input of appropriate medical specialists.
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