Blood Drug Testing

can normal blood tests detect serious illnesses like cancer and what not?

Public Comments

1. NO, ordinary blood test cannot detect cancer. Other tests like biopsy can do that. Believe me, more than half cancers in early stage are detected just by chance.
2. if the tech. is told how to screen it and what to look for there is blood test out there that will test for cancer and tell you what kind and a general location
3. That's a pretty open-ended question there. It would depend on what's considered "normal blood testing", what type(s) of cancer you're questioning, and if your doctor is actually looking for cancer. If you had a CBC, or a CBC w/Diff, and you're considering that to be a "normal blood testing", the techs will titrate the white blood count, red blood count, total count, neutrophils, etc. Many of these counts are used in detecting certain types of cancer, for instance leukemia/lymphoma. That would be found in an extremely elevated white count (the highest acceptable white count, depending on the lab, would be anywhere from 10 - 13), however I've just had a wbc that went up to 25.3 from inflammation and steroidal injections into my spinal area. There are other blood tests such as TSH levels that can tell the doctor if there's something going on with your thyroid, gluclose to see if your blood sugar is too high and you need further evaluations for diabetes, so again it all depends on what, exactly, you/your doctor are looking for. Any other information you could give (such as what it is that you're looking for specifically) could help in answering this question. Good luck to you, I hope all is well.