Help Me Decipher These Blood Test Results

We took Hannah in to be spayed yesterday and also asked for them to do blood work on her since the last time they did it she was so sick with an URI. She's still not 100% over the URI, but she's much, much better. When we picked her up today, they gave me her blood test results, but no explanation and everyone who knew something was in surgery. Can anybody help?

WBC 20.02 (low)
MONO 1.98 (high)
NEU 12.56 (high)
EOS 1.16 (high)
BASO 0.13 (high)

HCT 26.5 (low)
MCV 38.9 (low)

Thanks so much!

Stephanie

WBC- White Blood Count- measures the body immune system
HCT- is the hemocrit- measures the amount of red blood cells
MCV- measures the size of the red blood cells


And I apologize, but that is the furthest I can go for you.

Have you had your kitty tested for feline Leukemia and FIV? Did they give you the normal range of the WBCs?

Originally Posted by stephanietx

We took Hannah in to be spayed yesterday and also asked for them to do blood work on her since the last time they did it she was so sick with an URI. She's still not 100% over the URI, but she's much, much better. When we picked her up today, they gave me her blood test results, but no explanation and everyone who knew something was in surgery. Can anybody help?

WBC 20.02 (low)
MONO 1.98 (high)
NEU 12.56 (high)
EOS 1.16 (high)
BASO 0.13 (high)

HCT 26.5 (low)
MCV 38.9 (low)

Thanks so much!

Stephanie

Click to expand...

Hello.

Mono = monocytes
Neu = neutrophils
Eos = eosinophils
Baso = basophils
lymphocytes (which you didn't list)
(all 5 types together are referred to as the white blood cell differential)

All are types of white blood cells. At least for humans, we have mostly neutrophils - somewhere between 40-70%. Most of the rest of the white blood cells are lymphocytes (which I didn't see in your list) - about 20-50%. The rest are seen in very small numbers. The numbers you list need a range associated with them - if the upper limit of, let's say, monocytes, was 1.95, then the value you have of 1.98 is really not so high afterall. So if you have ranges, that might make you feel a little better. Also, some people have different baselines depending on their own personal physiology. For example, even in a non-infection state, I think I have more eosinophils than the "average" person. However, that doesn't adversely impact my health.

As for the MCV, that stands for mean corpuscle volume, which is a measure of the average (hence, mean) size of red blood cells. A higher than normal MCV means that the red blood cells are larger than normal; the opposite is true for the low MCV. Sometimes, the changes in red blood cell size have the do with anemia.

The HCT, or hematocrit, is the percentage of your blood that is composed of red blood cells. A low HCT can be an indicator of anemia. A typical reference range for humans is 39-49%; I don't know what it is for cats - I only know that value since my HCT is always low.

Hope that helps... this is much better than writing my thesis...

Thanks shambelle for the information and the ending giggle. Good luck with your thesis

Is she anemic? They can do a blood smear for that...

Thanks for that information! She has been tested for feline leukemia and it was negative, as was all those other bad kitty diseases. However, we're not sure about feline herpes. The test came back barely borderline (on the positive side), but she was so sick when he tested her. The vet wants to wait until she's well over this URI and test again.

Here's more info regarding the ranges they gave me. The "u" in the "ul" is that Greek symbol.

Normal Ranges have LaserCyte above them. (Some brand name??)

WBC=20.02 k/ul Normal Range=5.50-19.50
LYM=4.19 K/uL Normal Range=0.40-6.80
MONO=1.98K/uL Normal Range=0.15-1.70
NEU=12.56 K/uL Normal Range=2.50-12.50
EOS= 1.16 K/uL Normal Range=0.10-0.79
BASO=0.13 K/uL Normal Range=0.0-0.10
%LYM=20.9%
%MONO=9.9%
%NEU=62.7%
%EOS=5.8%
%BASO=0.6

HCT=26.5% Normal 30.0-45.0
MCV=38.9fL Normal 41.0-58.0

Also, her Sodium (Na) is low. It's 147.mmol/L. Range= 150-165

Thanks!

Stephanie, you should be asking your vet these questions. No one here is really qualified to help you, except for a rare individual or two. We are also a bulletin board, and not a chat room, so instant answers are not always available. Unlike some forums, we strive to put up correct answers to help people, but in a situation like this, you truly need to just make an appointment with your vet, take this lab results with you, leave the cat at home and go in and talk to him. I do this with my vet all the time, and usually he doesn't charge me anything (if I leave the cat at home).

Stephanie - you do need to call vet. But in the interim, go to
the Best Friends Animal forums - they have one you can join that
has a vet and vet tech on the board. They can give you better
explaination of why you might want to be concerned about
high WBC....and help you with questions to ask your vet...

The ranges are all close to normal and probably no cause for concern. Her hematocrit is actually within normal limits according to everything I have seen - 25% is usually considered low normal for a cat. I would seriously hope your vet would not have operated if he considered her to be anemic so she is probably fine.

The vet was out today, but I did leave a message hoping one of the techs would call me. I told the receptionist it would be fine if the tech called me, that I didn't need to talk to the vet directly since her numbers weren't too far out of range. He's back in the office tomorrow, so I'm calling again in the morning.

Thanks for the info. I'll check out the other site mentioned and see what I can find there!

Stephanie

I agree about chatting with your vet, and I'm so glad you called. Did you hook up with him this morning? If not, I'd go ahead and make an appointment to bring her for an exam and to discuss the results. Perhaps these ranges happen because of the spay combined with the URI?

One of our kitties, Tuxedo, had an autoimmune disease that caused his body to attack and destroy his red blood cells as if they were a virus. The most important measure used there was the hematocrit. So while 30% - 45% is normal in cats, 35% - 40% is the narrower "normal" range in cats. 24% or below is technically anemic. At 26%, combined with the other data, it looks to someone with no training that Hannah might have something that needs to be addressed. But like everyone has said - a vet is the best person to decide!

On a side note (not to get you all worried), but sometime in the relatively near future you should get her retested for all the bad feline diseases because many of them can be latent and generally should be tested more than once if kitty was a stray, came from a shelter or you don't know who mom is or there's some gap in her history that you don't know (2 or 3 times is plenty) and you want to be 100% sure of teh negatives. For a lot of them, they'll do a test called an Elisa that's generally accurate but has a larger margin of error than another test, called an IFA.

Just FYI