[blair77]

Two different hemoglobin levels in the same day?

by blair77 on Thu Jan 15, 2015 4:24 pm

My husband had labs drawn 2 hours apart, one at Labcorp for his primary care physician, which listed his hemoglobin at 13.4, and then later for his myeloma doctor at UCSF, which found his hemoglobin level to be 12.9.

Why the discrepancy?

Also, his platelets were 95 at one lab and 115 at the other?

[Multibilly]

Re: Two different hemoglobin levels in the same day?

by Multibilly on Thu Jan 15, 2015 4:32 pm

Different labs, different results? Labs don't all use the same equipment and test setups, so you will see different results from two different labs, even if the tests were done at the same time.

I have no idea how much hemoglobin can naturally fluctuate in two hours, but I would think (as a total layman) that it would hardly change over this short of a period in time. But I could be totally off base about this. Were the normal reference ranges for the two lab results identical?

By the way, that's why it's always good to check where your labs were done if you see a change in any of your values. You can always write off some of the change simply due to the lab work being done at a different facility.

[blair77]

Re: Two different hemoglobin levels in the same day?

by blair77 on Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:23 pm

Thanks Multibilly.

I find it annoying because the reference ranges were the same, so at the first lab draw, the hemoglobin was within the normal range, and at the second, it was "low".