Can a blood test detect cancer?!
Question: Or any other illness? Thanks
Answers: Or any other illness? Thanks
My husband had a blood test done because he was feeling tired all the time and he was having some problems with his stomach.Turned out he was anemic which was a marker that something was not right so further tests showed now that has colon cancer and the anemia is from blood loss.My husband was just diagnosed officially with colon cancer last Thursday after his colonoscopy and now is booked for surgery on teh 24th of March.So I belive that ya your blood test can reveal something is wrong to indicate other problems may be present.
yes
Yes.When you take a blood test, it'll show you that WBC's (white Blood Cells) are more than usual and dividing a lot and that's a result of having a disease
For some cancers, like Ovarian cancer yes! For some others, no! It is done with a special test, it's not picked up with routine blood work.
Some cancers can be detected with a blood test. For example a PSA is routinely run on men over 40 to detect prostate cancer. However, there are many cancers that cannot be detected by a blood test These tests can pick up many other problems such as anemia and HIV.
There really isn't any single test to detect all cancers and general blood tests cannot usually identify cancer unless a request was made to check for specific markers that could be associated with a particular type of cancer. Usually an analysis of other symptoms along with a range of blood tests may confirm that there is something not quite right, which may require further detailed tests and evaluations. This may include X-Rays, CT, MRI or PET scans.
A general blood test such as a Full Blood Count can however provide a lot of information, which in conjunction with other symptoms may establish the need for more specific tests that could identify the particular ailment more precisely.
FBC measures include;
- the amount of haemoglobin in the blood;
- the number of red blood cells (red cell count);
- the percentage of blood cells as a proportion of the total
blood volume (haematocrit or packed cell volume);
- the volume of red blood cells (mean cell volume);
- the average amount of haemoglobin in the red blood cells (known as mean cell haemoglobin);
- the number of white blood cells (white cell count);
- the percentages of the different types of white blood cells (leucocyte differential count); and
- the number of platelets.