Blood Drug Testing

Is it normal to have cancer and still have good blood tests?

Public Comments

1. Yes I have seen one person normal after positive report of blood cancer Take treatment at nearest cancer hospital Do yoga & pranayam Take more vegitables & fruits
2. Most people with early cancers have a normal panel of blood tests. I've seen several thousand people with malignant diseases. Most had normal routine blood tests at the beginning. People often fail to realize that there are hundreds of blood tests that are available. The standard ones look at the complete blood count, liver and kidney function, electrolytes, and serum proteins. Those of us with early cancers - and some with late, advanced cancers - may still show quite normal "routine" blood tests. There are some fairly specific blood tests that may be useful for some types of cancer, but these are not routinely done. Doctors cannot test for every possible disease at every visit. [Medical care is expensive enough as it is now.] Usually if cancer shows up on a routine blood test (other than a PSA for prostate cancer), it is often quite advanced. A cancer that causes liver damage, kidney damage, or aberrant blood counts is usually metastatic - beyond cure with surgery alone. It really is difficult to answer a question about "cancer" when the term cancer actually represents a couple of hundred different diseases. We could be more specific if you asked about one type of cancer. Most leukemia and multiple myeloma patients will have abnormal routine blood tests. Most breast cancer and lung cancer patients will have normal blood tests initially.
3. Yes, I did - I had thyroid cancer for at least 5 years before we found it. My blood tests - including my white blood count and my thyroid count were totally normal, even after we found the tumors.
4. Yes, it can happen. That's one of the reasons why cancer is sometimes hard to detect. There's an article on cancer screening at http://www.cancerdoubts.com which explains this.