Metabolic Blood Panel

[saltyk9]

My employer had a 'wellness assessment' free of charge that included some blood labs for those interested at no cost. I participated and everything was in the normal range except a few things in the metabolic panel.

BUN was high at 22 (normal ceiling is 20)
Creatinine was low at .45 (.76 is normal floor)
BUN/Creatinine Ratio was very high at 49 (normal ceiling is 19).
Glucose was low at 63 (65 is normal floor)
Carbon Dioxide was low at 19 (20 is normal floor)
and
Bilirubin was high at 1.5 (1.2 is normal ceiling)

The assessment did not come with any sort of consultation or review of results. They just simply posted them online into our accounts to view.
Does anyone know about this type of thing that can possibly shed some light on it for me?

Thanks so much.

[LSAT]

cOULDN'T YOU SEND IT TO YOUR PRIMARY CARE DOCTOR SO HE/SHE HAS IT IN YOUR HEALTH RECORDS?

[cflame1]

My employer had a 'wellness assessment' free of charge that included some blood labs for those interested at no cost. I participated and everything was in the normal range except a few things in the metabolic panel.

BUN was high at 22 (normal ceiling is 20)
Creatinine was low at .45 (.76 is normal floor)
BUN/Creatinine Ratio was very high at 49 (normal ceiling is 19).
Glucose was low at 63 (65 is normal floor)
Carbon Dioxide was low at 19 (20 is normal floor)
and
Bilirubin was high at 1.5 (1.2 is normal ceiling)

The assessment did not come with any sort of consultation or review of results. They just simply posted them online into our accounts to view.
Does anyone know about this type of thing that can possibly shed some light on it for me?

Thanks so much.

BUN and Creatinine have to do with your kidneys http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/blood-urea-nitrogen

[JDS74]

Print out a copy and send it to your regular doctor for advice.
In the meantime, take a look at the Mayo Laboratory test catalog for each of these test results.

http://www.mayomedicallaboratories.com/test-catalog/

For each entry, there is an explanation of the results.

Lab Tests Online is another source of information that may be more readable to a non-medical person.

http://labtestsonline.org/understanding ... tab/glance

There are others.

The values you show don't seem to be that far out of range to be really worrisome.

FYI on the range of results, you need to look at the limits for each test and then determine where in that range the particular value falls. The "normal" range is the average value attained during the calibration testing at the lab developing the test plus/minus two standard deviations. This means that about 95% or all well patients will have a value that falls withing the range and 2.5% fall on each side outside of the range. ( Statisticians please correct these numbers if I'm way off ).

You'll notice that the reference ranges given at Mayo's look to be different than the one's on your report. This is because the developer of their tests used a different procedure than yours. To make a comparison, convert your value into standard deviation value and then see where that value falls.

For example suppose your test value was 25 with a reference range of 15 - 40. The mean value of the reference range in this case is (15+40)/2 or 27.5 . The standard deviation in this reference range is (40-15)/4 or 6.25 . And your value (25) is (25-27.5)/6.25 or about -0.3 . Any SD number between -2.0 and +2.0 is considered normal. In my experience, doctors don't get excited about results until the SD number gets pretty far out of range unless there is a pattern showing consistent results for some particular disease that shows up in several test values.

In the Mayo catalog, the BUN reference range for females is:
> or =18 years: 6-21 mg/dL

Your result for their test would be barely outside of the range. I would assume that the reference range for your tests would be similar and you would need to do the same calculation to make a comparison. It looks like here, you are barely outside of the range.

Apologies if you are not female - then you'd use the male values posted for comparisons.

[saltyk9]

Thank you for the links.
I realize that most are barely outside of the range, but when you calculate the BUN/Creatinine ratio, I would say it is significantly outside of the normal range. That is the only one that really raises a flag for me.