Using personalized rather than standard reference points for the routine blood test known as a complete blood count (CBC) could improve assessments of patient health and diagnosis of diseases in earlier stages while patients still appear healthy, according to a study led by Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital.
CBC screening is valuable for assessing a patient’s overall health using a single blood sample. Currently, the results of CBC tests are analyzed using a one-size-fits-all reference. The new analysis suggests that this approach can overlook natural variations and deviations in health.
In a retrospective analysis of more than 12,000 adults who received multiple CBC tests across 20 years, the researchers showed that these reference intervals are far from widely generalizable.
Read the full article with findings here.
The post Could Personalizing Complete Blood Count Test Improve Patient Care? appeared first on North Carolina Medical Society.