Medical professional DIS'ers RBC/anemia question

[Cindy B]

I have a quick question for you.

A person is diagnosed as being anemic.


They have a red blood cell count of 4.5 million RBC per mm3 of blood. The 4.5 million RBC is within normal ranges for females and on the low end of average for males

How could this be possible?

I don't understand how this is possible. Does hemocrit have something to do with it?

Thanks

 

[luv2nascar]

I found this. I hope it is helpful. Good luck.

Anemia with a normal MCV, and with normal red cells on the smear suggests an anemia of impaired production - renal failure, chronic illness, marrow supression by drugs.

 

[Cindy B]

I got the similiar answer but wasnt sure if that is correct or not.

 

[delilah]

Any laboratory value has a range that can be considered normal. Since women normally have menstrual blood loss, the norms for women trend toward a lower level before being considered pathologic. That is why the range for women differs from that for men. The normal range also differs from lab to lab, because different techniques are used which yield slightly different values. If you had your blood checked at several different labs, the same sample would give slightly different values.

The MCV is the mean corpuscular volume. If you have a normal number of red cells, but a decreased hematocrit, you would have a low MCV, which would indicate iron deficiency. If you have an increased MCV, you may have folate or Vit B12 deficiency. A normal MCV in the setting of anemia can indicate anemia of chronic disease, such as renal failure. Actually, from the original question, I don't quite have enough information to answer the question of what type of anemia the patient would have.

 

[Cindy B]

Thanks for you help. The information was leaning toward renal failure, but I wasn't entirely sure.

I don't need to know what exactly anemia .