Blood Drug Testing

Can a basic routine blood test spot signs of cancer?

By "basic routine" I mean the tests which check for blood type and white cell count.

Public Comments

1. If you have leukemia, yes it can. Sometimes Lymphoma shows up. But many other cancers do not show up in routine blood tests.
2. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia will show up on blood tests
3. E.N.D. - A basic routine CBC (Complete Blood Count) has less than a 5% chance of showing signs of cancer, especially in the earlier stages. Rare exceptions are the hematopoietic cancers such as all the different types of leukemia and some of the lymphomas. Actual cancer cells are normally too large to circulate with the relatively tiny blood cells through tiny blood capillaries in our circulation.