rmlyonsfamily Posted October 14, 2011 Report Share Posted October 14, 2011 Kayleigh's labwork looks good. Her sodium is back down to 138, which is good (it was high). Her potassium says 4.0 "hemolyzed result". What does that mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janiedelite Posted October 15, 2011 Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 Hemolysis means the red blood cells ("hemo") have broken open ("lysis"). This happens if the needle used to draw the blood was too small for the blood cells to pass through uninjured (which can happen with a butterfly needle), or if the blood was shaken, or if a syringe was used to withdraw the blood and the plunger was pulled too forcefully. When the blood hemolyzes, the potassium that was in the cell is released and can give a falsely elevated reading. The sodium will be unchanged because the only place sodium is found is outside of the red blood cell, in the plasma. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmlyonsfamily Posted October 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 So, will they more than likely redo her labs? He was concerned about her potassium levels because of the dose her Florinef is (she takes 0.3mg daily). I haven't talked to Dr. Kanter's office yet - just went online and saw her labs were posted today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janiedelite Posted October 15, 2011 Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 Hopefully they'll re-draw her potassium level. If they don't re-draw, you should call your doc's office and request that they re-draw because it was hemolyzed. You know how it is with doctors... sometimes they're too busy to look at the labs themselves or the fact that it is hemolyzed gets overlooked some other way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmlyonsfamily Posted October 15, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2011 I'll call them Monday. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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