How to Read Blood Test Results

Blood tests help detect the root cause of the disease or disorder. One should never hesitate to undergo a blood test as it helps in the diagnosis of the disease and designing of the treatment. Your doctor may order a blood test for various reasons. After checking the physical symptoms, doctors can guess white might have gone wrong. But to confirm the diagnosis, they need blood tests results. Before taking a look at how to read blood test results, here is a list of common reasons for getting a blood test done.

Why a Blood Test is Ordered: Common Reasons

A blood test can help diagnose a problem related to dysfunction of body organs and scarcity or excessive production of hormones. It helps detect various situations like menopause and serious diseases like cancers. After checking the levels of various components of blood, doctors can conclude about the physical condition of the patient. Fasting rules for blood tests may depend upon for what the blood test is ordered. For example, a blood test can be ordered to check blood sugar (to check severity of diabetes), ferritin, albumin, globulin, thyroid hormones, HGH hormone, concentration of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in the blood, creatinine, protein, etc.

Thyroid blood test helps analyze thyroid problems while a creatinine test helps assess kidney problems. Pregnancy testhelps confirm pregnancy while a PSA test helps assess prostate health. A uric acid test helps diagnose gout. So, while reading the results of blood test, you need to know the normal values of the blood components tested.

Reading blood test results seems easy if you know the terminology used and what do high or low levels of specific elements in blood indicate. Those who are being treated for various diseases or disorders need to undergo routine blood tests to check the effectiveness of the treatment. It is just impossible to explain each and every type of blood test here. But as you are worried about how to read blood test results, here follows explanation of some commonly tested blood components and their normal values.

Blood Tests: Normal Levels of Blood Components

Name of the Blood Component	Optimal Range
Platelets	150,000 - 450,000 per μl (microliter)
White Blood Cells	4,500 to 10,000 cells/mcL
Average red blood cell size (MCV)	80 to 95 femtoliter
Thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH	0.4 - 4.0 mIU/L
Prostate specific antigen or PSA	Less than 4 ng/mL
Uric acid	Below 6.8mg/dL (.40 mmol/L)
Hemoglobin amount per red blood cell (MCH)	27 to 31 pg/cell
Amount of hemoglobin relative to the size of the cell or hemoglobin concentration per red blood cell (MCHC)	32 to 36 gm/dL
Blood Sugar	70 - 100 mg/dL for kids and 70 - 140 mg/dL for adults
Hemoglobin	13.8 to 17.2 gm/dL for male and 12.1 to 15.1 gm/dL for female
Red Blood Cells	4.7 to 6.1 million cells/mcL for male and 4.2 to 5.4 million cells/mcL for female
Hematocrit	40.7 to 50.3 % for male and 36.1 to 44.3 % for female

For understanding blood test results, it is necessary to know about various parameters used to measure blood components. For example, cells/mcL = cells per microliter; gm/dL = grams per deciliter; pg/cell = picograms per cell. The values will change according to the parameters used, so it is necessary to read your blood test results correctly. You should not conclude about your physical condition hastily if you see abnormal blood test results. You should consult your doctor before interpreting blood test results. Interpretation of blood test results requires thorough knowledge of the subject. Moreover, normal levels of blood components may vary from person to person, depending upon genetics, age, weight and sex. Sometimes, the normal levels (reference levels) of blood components vary from lab to lab. Accordingly, you might get the remarks 'high' or 'low' in your blood test results.

Blood tests help diagnose blood disorders like anemia, as you get acute information of blood chemistry through blood tests. Those who are worried about how to read blood test results, should not panic after abnormal blood test results. Blood test is one of the means to diagnose a disease. It is not the only way to reach the final conclusion. After checking the blood test results, doctors may ask you to undergo some more tests. In some cases, doctors may order a repeat test after a few days. There are chances of false positive or false negative tests. With the help of blood tests and some other tests like X rays, ultra-sonography, biopsy; doctors can draw the final conclusion.