Why is a blood test is important?
A blood test analyzed in a lab helps in tracking your overall health and any other major health conditions existing in your body. These may include diabetes, high cholesterol and other. Blood test is one of the common diagnosis tests included in healthcare. There are many other benefits from blood tests that it helps in finding the health of other organs – kidneys, heart, liver etc., Diagnosing diseases such as coronary heart disease, HIV/AIDS, cancer and diabetes.
Further it also helps in knowing whether the medicine is working to make you better in health.
Regular blood test
A regular and routine blood test can give you a complete blood picture which checks 10 levels of your blood cells which are – white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. The other components in this test include – red blood count, hematocrit and hemoglobin.
The complete blood test report reveals some of the nutritional deficiencies such as – B6, B12, anemia, infection, clotting problems if any, and any other immune system disorders.
Heart Blood Tests List
When is the need to get a blood test for heart? When there are symptoms of heart disease, such as having a mild or major heart attack or sometimes doctors recommend blood test to the patients who are at greater risk of having a heart attack. Because a heart blood test can reveal the risk of heart failure or the development of plagues in patient’s arteries.
It is also important to note that a mere blood test cannot identify the risk of having a heart disease. But the risk factors for getting a heart disease are – smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure.
How do I prepare for the blood test?
As medically it is proven that blood test can offer many clues about your heart health, if there are high levels of cholesterol present in the blood, it indicates that the patient is likely exposed to the risk of having a heart attack.
If there are other substances in patient’s blood, it can help your doctor to determine if there are any other deposits like plaques in your arteries.
The following are some of the blood tests that are most important to check the health of patient’s heart and identify the cardiac risks.
Cholesterol Test
A complete cholesterol blood test which is also called as lipid panel or lipid profile, measures the volume of cholesterol and triglycerides in your blood.
Lipid panel or lipid profile as called for complete cholesterol test, this blood test helps in measuring the levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in patient’s blood. This test helps in determining the risk of fatty deposits in patient’s arteries. As an important tool, cholesterol test can clearly indicate the level of risks for coronary artery disease.
Plasma Ceramides
This test assesses the levels of ceramides in the blood. Ceramides are very important in the growth, function and death of various types of tissue. Particularly, when it comes to the building up of plague in the arteries and insulin resistance, ceramides have been associated to the heart. High levels of ceramides in the blood indicate a sign of high level risk of heart diseases in a span of of one to five years.
Natriuretic Peptides
B-type natriuretic peptide, also called BNP is a protein prepared by blood vessels in your heart. Helping to eliminate fluids while relaxing the blood vessels and also enables sodium to pass in urine.
The body emits high levels of BNP into the blood stream when the heart is damaged. High levels of BNP try to help and ease the burden on the heart. Further, BNP will also try to determine the shortness of breath, if that is due to which heart failure has occurred.
Troponin T
This is a protein available in the muscle of heart and by measuring Troponin T in the test, it helps doctor to provide diagnose a heart attack and also identify further risks of heart disease. When there’s an increased level of Troponin T, it means there is a higher risk of heart problem among patients who show no symptoms.
Test Results
Results of blood test help identify different element in your blood and based on the test results, the next step of health care is provided.
Total cholesterol test result must be
- 75 to 169 mg/dL. for 20 years of younger
- 100 to 199 mg/dL.for 21 years or older
Triglycerides or TG results must be less than 150 mg/dL. A high result greater than 500 to 1,000 mg/dL is likely to increase the risk of pancreatitis. Levels usually appear as high when patient has obesity or diabetes.
