Some of the best tools we have for monitoring your health are targeted blood tests, such as a complete blood count (CBC) and a comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP).
At Forest Urgent Care, our team appreciates how important these tests can be for monitoring your health. To give you an idea about what we can accomplish with a CBC or CMP test (or both), here’s a look at what each is designed to evaluate.
Your blood contain four main ingredients:
With a CBC, we measure the levels of the first three items on this list (plasma is the liquid substance that carries these cells). A CBC not only provides us with an overall count of your red and white blood cells and your platelets, but we can also measure the balance between the three.
In addition, we can also evaluate how well your body is producing each of these cells and the size and shape of these cells. Your blood contains five different types of white blood cells, and a CBC breaks this down to tell us how many of each kind you have.
All of this information can tell us quite a bit about your health, and we routinely turn to a CBC to help us figure out whether you may have one of the following issues:
This list is far from complete, but it gives you an idea about the many health conditions that we can identify with this simple frontline diagnostic tool.
A CMP is a more targeted test that evaluates:
To give you an idea of the importance of this test, let’s take the first item we can measure — glucose levels. Given the high prevalence of diabetes in the United States (a condition in which your body struggles to regulate levels of glucose in your blood), you can see why the CMP is an important diagnostic tool.
As well, the CMP gives us a good glimpse at how well some of your major organs are functioning, including your liver and kidneys.
As you can see, the CMP delivers valuable information that can help detect an existing problem or a brewing one, which allows us to take immediate action that may even reverse the course of some serious and chronic health issues.
The process for undergoing these tests is very simple — we simply draw a sample of your blood.
If you have more questions about these invaluable diagnostic tools, please contact one of our New York locations in Forest HIlls or Hunters Point in Long Island City.
