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  Discussion on Understanding bloodwork
Author Message
New Member:
kamib

Posted on Monday, Dec 10, 2007 - 12:34 am:

I'm hoping for help in understanding if this is normal. The horse is a healthy TB in training who has no signs of any real disease and is actually improving in his performance. His only issue is a lump that may be an enlarged lymph or a tumor, but it has reduced to half the size in the month that he's been here. So we're waiting a little while to see if it goes away instead of doing a biopsy.

The blood work was draw 30 min after a 3 furlong work that didn't really test his capacity, but still wasn't a gallop. I'm trying to understand if the values that are out of normal range can be a result of the timing of the test. Normal ranges are in parens. The most concerning is the low platlet count.

WBC 6.11 (5.4 - 14.3) (all under this are in normal range)

RBC 9.96 (6.8 - 12.9)
HGB 17.8 (11 - 19)
HCT 43.15 (32 - 53)
MCV 43 (37 - 59)
MCH 17.9 (12.3 - 19.7)
MCHC 41.2 (31 - 39) +++high
RDWc 21.6

PLT 59 (100 - 400) ---low

The only other out of range readings were
GLU 122 (65 - 110)
TBI 2.9 (0.5 - 2.3)

Can the platelets be temporarily low because of the work? The vet is not concerned about the bloodwork and thinks it is great. He was scoped after his last race and did not bleed. He races on lasix and I am hoping to wean him off of it. We are decreasing dosage and scoping after races to be safe about it, so that is part of why the concern. I correlate low platelets to 'thin blood'.

If platelets could be low from the timing, then I won't mess with his nutrition program. But if not, then I need to look for what is off.}
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Tuesday, Dec 11, 2007 - 7:00 am:

It is normal for glucose to rise during short intensive exercise and without symptoms of disease the slight rise in total bilirubin is of no consequence. To further explore the meaning of the rise requires seperating it into direct and indirect bili to determine the source.

Reading platelets is a little tricky and many things throw this number off so without clinical signs and taking into account the extreme rareness of primary platelet disease (primary thrombocytopenia) I would not be concerned about this finding either.
DrO
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