AIBU to ask how serious a haemoglobin level of 4 is?

[Bloodsquestion]

Hi! Not looking for medical advice at all, just wondered if someone on here could possibly break it down a bit or explain it so I can understand

what does a haemoglobin of 4 mean? Obviously I know it’s too low, but is it insanely and dangerously low or just sort of low and needs fixed but not an immediate crisis? I tried googling and it says it’s very low but I just can’t quite make sense of what it even means (it’s the iron in blood, right?) but when I googled it to try and understand more I kept finding things about ferratin and iron stores which I think is different but sort of the same thing as in its iron in the blood? The result I’m talking about was definitely haemoglobin (hb), everything is all fine now but just trying to sort of understand and make sense of it because I can’t quite get my head around it!

if anyone could briefly explain in simple terms I’d really appreciate it!

What are the units?

It doesn’t say it just says Hb on the discharge letter- but I vaguely remember them saying it should be more than 11 I think or possibly 12? Not sure if that helps at all x

If it's actually 4 ( what units?) then you should go to the ED

It’s not it’s fine now! I tried to make that clear in my OP when I said it’s all fine now, sorry if not but I’m fine now!

I was just recently unwell and it was really low, everyone kept talking about it to me as if it was a wtf-it’s-so-low kind of thing but honestly I couldn’t follow or make sense of it at all and just thought I’d try and understand it a bit more now I’m feeling better! Then when I googled it I got completely confused because I kept seeing stuff about Ferratin and iron stores.

I remember when the result came back everyone seemed to completely freak out whereas my knowledge about anaemia was just that you needed to take iron once a day so it was completely new to me

Sounds more like iron that HG. 4 is very low for iron, think you'd be dead if HG was that low tbh

Sorry probably me being stupid but what’s the difference between iron and haemoglobin? I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it😫

I know I was really unwell and it was treated with replacements and transfusions but tbh I felt so shit I didn’t take much information in at all at the time!

Did you have a transfusion at any stage?

4 would be spectacularly very low (doctor). Could drift down chronically and the body compensate but with symptoms of anaemia (but still need urgent attention) or drop suddenly in the context of major uncontrolled bleeding (very dangerous).

If your Hb was actually 4 you would have been at quite a big risk of cardiac arrest.

Yeah several x

Yeah it was from bleeding down there (bowel/colon), they said it had been a slow bleed sort of trickling away for a while which is why I was sort of used to feeling awful because it happened over time x

Have you had a colonoscopy now to rule out cancer?

Lots of love to you. I have the same condition and i have 2 measurements that they monitor for me. One is the iron level in my blood. It should be above 120 and if you drop under 70 then you need a blood transfusion. 40 is very low, I’ve been down to 47 so had 3 bags of blood. Some nurses use a measurement divided by 10 so you could be at 4.0. Then there is your blood stores and that might be the 4 as well. However my understanding is if it’s the blood stores then you need an iron infusion to treat this to pull it up and replenish your stores. Have they put you on oral iron to keep your levels up? I hope they’ve found your root cause and getting the treatment you need

My ferritin was 2 and my hb was 68. I was told that it was potentially fatal as my hb was dropping given a blood transfusion to get hb up and then an iron transfusion to bring up ferritin.

It is interesting the sudden leap from “just anemia” take an iron tablet to the GP to a hospital bed with everyone wondering how it is you are still functioning.

I used to work in A&E and amongst many other patients I recall an older man with an Hb of 4. His skin was ghostly white blue/grey colour and his had been a slow bleed. It was generally trauma patients who had such a low Hb.

Hb of 4 is an extremely low, life threatening level OP, not just a little bit low and not correctable by a daily vitamin pill! I hope they found the cause and you are being monitored now.

I had colon cancer a couple of years ago and my Hb dropped to 80 (or 8). I felt like shit. I’m surprised you weren’t severely symptomatic with an Hb of 40.

4g/dL is the same as 40g/L…. In the UK it’s more common these days to use the latter. It’s a very low haemoglobin that certainly needed treatment and investigation, but how much of a problem it is depends on how quickly it happens/what’s caused it/whether the bleeding’s stopped/what other medical problems someone has. It is not the same as ferritin or serum iron. It needs the full set of results and context to interpret properly. Glad it sounds like they have you on the mend.

I don’t know exactly what was measured but an iron related measurement that was taken after I had my dd was 7.7 and I needed a transfusion (2 units) and iron tablets. I couldn’t stand without feeling dizzy.

I had a blood transfusion at iron level 4, HG 83 and ferritin 5. You can't function

Oh my goodness, that's very low. I'm a Midwife and haven't personally saw a result much lower than 60 (yours is 40). Mine was 68 at its lowest and I felt horrendous.

I hope you keep well going forwards.

As a child I had a condition called aplastic anaemia, which is an autoimmune condition where the body attacks the bone marrow, causing it to fail and therefore not produce blood cells. To put your hb of 4 into perspective, if mine went below 7, I had to be given a transfusion. This normally happened twice a week before treatment, and for a while after. The normal range for a female adult is around 11-14. I get yearly blood checks over 30 years later, and normally sit about 12.
Glad to hear you have recovered, you must have felt very ill with a count as low as that.