help from medical person or someone with blood test info?

[lucy123]

This isn't really important, but I'm curious.

I've just got my first lot of pregnancy blood tests back. They're in Spanish and experience tells me there's no point in looking the terms up in a dictionary...

The system they use is obviously a british/US one as the high / low results are marked "H" and "L" (corresponding Spanish words are A and B) so perhaps the oreder is exactly the same as on British tests. The things they have analused are:

Leucocitos (Lucocites or something?)
hematies (L)
hemaglobina (I know what that is! )
hematocrito
VCM
HCM (H)
CHCM
ADE
plaquetas (platelets, I guess)
VPM

and some other things. Just wondering really what the hematies (heamites?? ) and the HCM might be as I have low and high levels of them respectively.

Like I say, I'm not worried, but can anyone guess what they are and what it might mean to have low / high levels of them really.

[leese]

As I don't speak Spanish, wouldn't like to hazrd a guess Lucy123. However, just to say that the 'normal' values of your blood composition do change in pregnancy. bit difficult to explain, but this result will just have come from a lab which deals with blood results en masse - ie: yours, and Mr jones down the street who's 74 with angina etc. Therefore, a High or Low result is probably perfectly normal in your pregnancy state (but wouldn't necessarily be for Mr Jones, if you catch my drift!)
It will be up to the midwife/GP to interpret the result, taking the pregnancy into account

[janh]

Is whymummy about? She might have a slightly better idea?

[lucy123]

thanks leese - that would explain why it gives normal levels for men and women.

I should buy a technical dictionary really but the only one I have seen was £200!

In the meantime, could you recommend a good textbook that goes beyond the "at x months, baby is the size of a y and has h j and k fully developed" thing? I do like to know these things.

[nosyparker]

hi lucy123
wish I'd asked this a while ago but I never found out - oh well maybe someone can tell us - do your results have the average next to them? mine at least had that so I could tell if I had 'passed' or not - if you don't have that info either I can dig out my notes and write them down if you like

[nosyparker]

sorry - didn't read your post properly first time round

[whymummy]

hi lucy
leucocitos are leucocytes or white cells
hematies i`m almost possitive is red blood cells ,i can ask a friend of mine in spain she works at a hospital lab for the abbreviations if you like

[Tissy]

These are (fairly educated) guesses, but...

lecucocitos= leucocytes= white blood cells
hematies=red blood cells
hematocrito=haematocrit=% of total volume made up of red blood cells
HCM=mean corpuscular haemoglobin= the amount of haemoglobin in each red cell
CHCM=mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration=can't remember precise explanation of this one!
VCM=mean cell volume= how big the red cells are

From these results, if I am right, I would say that you have a low level of red blood cells, but each cell that you do have is loaded with haemoglobin. These are pretty much normal results in pregnancy, unless the levels are way outside the normal range.

HTH

[KeepingMum]

Hi I had a look at MedLine which does spanish as well, it came up with these definitions for the blood tests

VCM - volumen corpuscular media
HCM - hemaglobina corpuscular media
CHCM - concentration de hemaglobina corpuscular media
I think this is more of a breakdown of how the haemoglobin is carried
plaquetas - conteos de plaquetas - platelet count
hematocrit - count of red blood cells

This page might help as your spanish is probably a lot better than my tourist spanish

www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/ency/article/003644.htm#Nombres%20alternativos

Hope this helps

[KeepingMum]

Looks like Tissy knows the translations and is a faster typer than me!

[lucy123]

thanks you two. I'll have a look at that web page (it'll be good practice)

[leese]

lucy123 - you could always look at a midwifery text book. They are obviously far more in depth, and will give you much more info than you actually want - depends how much you do want I suppose!