What can a full blood count or complete blood count help to detect?

Doctor's Answers 1

Photo of Dr Grace Su
Dr Grace Su

General Practitioner

The short answer would be: it can help detect many things! Understanding the components of any blood test and how diseases affect them is part and parcel of interpreting blood results.

To help you understand more about what an FBC can help show, we will need
to look at the components in an FBC/CBC test.

An FBC identifies many of the major cell types such as our haemoglobin (red blood cells that carry oxygen), platelet count (cells important in clotting, which can drop in illnesses such as dengue), white blood cell count (important in our immune function, and can be raised in inflammatory conditions).

There are also indicators for the differential white cell counts (e.g. lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils) which can be changed depending on the source of inflammation (infection vs allergies), and also indicators for the size, colour, and even concentration of our blood cells.

Depending on the problem, changes in all these parameters help us determine what the problem might be.

In screening, an FBC is used to identify anaemia (low blood count) and depending on the size and colour of our cells (macrocytic vs microcytic anaemia), we may be able to narrow down the cause of anaemia (folate/B12 deficiency, iron deficiency/thalassemia) for further investigations.

However, as amazing as blood tests may be seen in helping you know all the nitty-gritty parameters, it is always important to look at a patient as a whole. For physicians, we must always remember to treat patients and not just numbers.

Taking into account blood test results while also tying this in with history taking and physical examination, as well as even things like exercise, sleep and dietary history, are all important omponents in forming a complete picture that aids physicians in treating patients more
holistically.

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