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  Discussion on Differentials?
Author Message
Member:
kamibroo

Posted on Monday, Aug 20, 2007 - 1:46 am:

Can you post what these are? I have blood work on a horse that I was comparing to your ranges and you show stabs as rare, but this horse was at 4. His report reads:

seg - 61
stab - 4
lymph - 32
mono - 2
eosin - 0
baso - 1

This is bloodwork on a TB 2 days after a race. He has lower hock problem and a bowed tendon (not new in the race). The results that the lab high lighted were

Total Protein - 6.6 (pos dehydration?)
GOT (AST) - 800 - tying up?

CPK - 210 - he had been hand walked in the AM
LDH - 150

The horse was just claimed and has been pulled from training based on ultra sound of his tendon. But I'm still interested in understanding his blood work. With exception of GOT (AST) he's in the normal ranges of those items posted here.

WBC is 6.7 I might be missing something, but didn't see a normal range.

While the horse did race, he outclassed all the others. He was bumped by another horse early then basically hand riden (no whips or pressure) to a 3 length lead in the race itself.

I've been trying to find a description of this part of the blood work on the internet and am probably searching with the wrong key words.

Any help would be appreciated

Kami
Member:
kamibroo

Posted on Monday, Aug 20, 2007 - 2:05 am:

Sorry, I did just find the WBC on re-reading the article. So that one's answered.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Aug 20, 2007 - 12:32 pm:

Hello USHO,
The problem with evaluating lab results alone is that without correlating physical findings they often are meaningless or have many possible meanings (including normal) and therefore listing differentials based on testing is looking at medical evaluation in reverse. Proper evaluation is first having abnormal clinical findings, from which you generate a list of differentials, then use tests to confirm the differentials or measure the severity. You describe a healthy horse so these changes are of questionable importance.

Assuming some of the above changes represent mild abnormalities compared to your labs normals they may be related to recent intensive exercise: muscle enzymes (like the AST) are released during intensive exercise and if there is mild dehydration might also be related to the recent work out. If you would like to learn more about muscle enzymes in health and disease see, Diseases of Horses » Lameness » Muscle & Tendon Diseases » Rhabdomyolysis: Tying Up, Shivers, PSSM, EPSM.

I should also note to give any evaluation requires knowing the units and the lab normals, particularly when looking at the WBC differential which is very subjective evaluation. It could be that someone at their lab often sees "stabs" or what I call "band cells" but even so as a percentage (less than 1%) are in the normal range of our list (0-1%). During a active infection we see rising stabs that are in proportion with how difficult the body is having fighting the infection.
DrO
Member:
octavius

Posted on Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007 - 12:31 pm:

Here's a site that might give you some explanation of the blood values. Scroll to the top of the page to read from the beginning.

https://home3.inet.tele.dk/omni/alttest.htm#creatinine
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