What is a complete blood count and how frequently will my doctor monitor this?

What is a complete blood count and how frequently will my doctor monitor this? So a complete blood count is essentially looking at the different type of cells we have, white cells, red cells, and platelets. Really the key ones that you'll be focused on with each check would be the white count, but more importantly the neutrophil count or what's called the absolute neutrophil count. Sometimes this can say PMN, poly, neutrophil, it can say a lot of different things or it may say ANC which stands for absolute neutrophil count. Again that level is really important to know if you need to be on antibiotics as far as infectious risk. As far as the red cells we really look at the hemoglobin, this will tell you whether or not you may need a blood transfusion. And lastly the platelet count and whether or not you would need a platelet transfusion. Of course platelets help prevent us from bleeding. As far as the frequency, typically in AML patients early on in therapy may need twice a week labs. And then as responses are achieved hopefully that can be spaced out. It really depends on what ongoing therapy is being done or not. Usually a minimum for once a month through a year and then three months to two years and then usually some level of every six months or so periodically. That being said if you or the patient is ever not feeling well or changes you really have to repeat a CBC. It's really a dynamic and real time test for our patients. When you're looking at a complete blood cell count or CBC you want to make sure that you have a differential. A lot of times I print out a copy of their labs with the reference range from the most recent time that I've measured it and I go over what is the white blood cell count, what is the hemoglobin and how does it compare to the reference range and then what are the platelets. So those are the first big pieces that you want to look at when you're looking at your CBC and the differential part is what comes usually gets resulted later. So if they had it that day it might not be available but you really want to look at that because the differential tells you what type of white blood cells there are. It differentiates the type of white blood cells and so if you have AML and you can see blasts you shouldn't really be able to see blasts if you didn't have AML. So the more blasts you have that's usually like the bigger the tumor burden and then you go through it. You want to look at neutrophils too because if you're severely neutropenic then if you get an infection, if you get a fever it can be really bad. And then platelets of course to see whether you need a transfusion with platelets where transfused for 10,000 or less but if you're on a blood thinner we would have you stop it usually if you're less than 50,000 or less than 30,000 and we look at that hemoglobin to see you know is it within the reference range usually not but do you need a transfusion and different patients have different thresholds. If it's less than seven pretty much you're going to need a transfusion but if you have cardiac or pulmonary problems then you might need to set that bar a little higher like eight. So the main parts of the complete blood count that I like a patient to focus on really is the white blood cell count, the hemoglobin and the platelet count. Typically those can be affected by therapy and can help us determine when the patient's immune system is being affected.