Talk:Reference ranges for common blood tests

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] UK Ranges

I'm puzzled by the number of analytes that have "UK ranges" in brackets e.g. 'Sodium: 130 - 145 mmol/L (UK 135-146 mmol/L)'. Surely the UK is not biochemically different to the rest of the world? Indeed it has as much of a racial mix as continental Europe or the USA. I'm assuming that the two different ranges came from two different textbooks, one of which happens to be published in the UK. I think some consensus should be reached for these analytes, and a single range quoted (NB age-, sex- and pregnancy-related ranges really will be different!). Scolaire 15:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I have recently moved to the US from the UK, and strangely enough all recommendations as to reference ranges and even the doses of drugs are different. So I don't think it would be appropriate to just convert values. Actually the reason for this post is that in the US, the reference ranges for serum lipids are in mg/dL. These seem to be in the articles linked from this section, but not here. Jkwan 12:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with the difference between SI units and "American" units. What bugs me is a range such as "2.6 - 6.8 mmol/L or 10 - 20 mg/dL (UK 2.5 - 6.4 mmol/L)". Now, you can say "UK 2.5 - 6.4 mmol/L, US 10 - 20 mg/dL" — that makes perfect sense; but to say that a urea of 6.5 mmol/L is normal for anybody in the US and raised for anybody in the UK is bizarre! What's needed for all of these analytes is two sets of agreed reference ranges only - one in SI units and one in "American" units. I may get around to doing it myself some day but I'm kinda hoping somebody else will do it first. Scolaire 20:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of whether or not the actual normal ranges for these tests in the populations of the UK and US are the same, doctors in the two countries use different values. This may result from the fact that different proffesional bodies in the two countries come up with different recommendations using different sources. I think it is right to quote both - so that patients can see the reference values their doctor uses to make decisions. Incidently, within the UK different NHS hospitals use slightly different reference ranges (for example some hospitals take the upper limit for potassium to be 5.5). Jkwan 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Jkwan, you're missing the point - hospital laboratories everywhere use slightly different reference ranges for everything. These may be derived in-house, taken from a textbook or taken from an instrument manual. There is no standard set of ranges for anything anywhere. That is precisely why they are called reference ranges, not absolute ranges or some such. You may as well say "All Saints: 2.6-6.8, St. Elsewhere's: 2.5-6.4" as say "US: 2.6-6.8, UK: 2.5-6.4". There is no national difference between ranges for any of the analytes in this article. The manual for an American analyser (say, Abbott) or a European analyser (say, Roche) will quote the same ranges in America as in Europe, and labs using that analyser will quote those ranges wherever in the world they are. Hospitals using textbooks are just as likely to use Tietz in Europe as in America. What you are saying is that you were accustomed to one set of ranges when you were in the US, and then met a different set of ranges when you went to Britain, but had you walked half a mile down the road you would probably have seen just as big a difference. Patients reading this article will not see the reference values their doctor uses to make decisions, only the particular one (or in this case two) that a particular editor encountered in a particular lab. In the end, it doesn't matter which one we go with — they are all roughly the same and they are only for reference anyway — but there needs to be only one set! Scolaire 21:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Readability

May I suggest separating the reference ranges and the units used into separate columns. Right now, I'm having trouble with readability. If I already know a test number and unit of measure, all I'm after is the high/low range. That's hard to see with the current setup. Also, I would love to see headers for each column.

I'm willing to do the actual grunt work to fix this, but I didn't want to just go muck in someone else's entry.

dafydd 05:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)