Pls explain about the Blood tests APTT, PT, PTINR, CBC &admissible values?

Question

My father taking Blood thinner medicines

Answer 1

Thyese are prothrombin times (or tests) which determine how long it takes the blood to clot. If it is too high, blood is too thin. Vitamin K is needed in that case. CBC is a "complete blood count." It measures standard blood values to check for any number of problems. This is a standard blood test for most anyone who is having a physical done. Hope your father is doing well. I don't have mine any longer. I miss him a lot.

Answer 2

Without knowing the indication, I can't predict your physician's target INR range for your father.

Answer 3

cbc is full study of red, white cells and platelet count...pt with INR ( INR is just another way of expressing the PT value) tests clotting activity affected by coumadin...appt clotting activity affected by heparin...diff labs have diff normals.

Answer 4

A CBC is a complete blood count and generally consists of four numbers:  the white blood cell (WBC) count, the hemoglobin (the amount of oxygen-carrying molecules in the red blood cells), the hematocrit (number of RBCs per unit of blood volume) and the platelet count.  You can do the WBC count as a "CBC with differential" and that will also give you some additional numbers that tell you how many there are of the different types of WBC--there are a number of them (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils and basophils).  Platelet count varies widely but can give you an idea about whether there is a lot of clotting going on and platelets are being consumed.

Additional blood tests that you can add to the CBC include the MCV (mean corpuscular volume), the MCH (mean corpuscular hemoglobin) and the MCHC (mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration).  You would mostly be interested in these if you were concerned about anemia.  Another related test is the RDW (red cell distribution width) or the reticulocyte count, both of which are a rough measure of how many new RBCs are being produced.

The other tests you mention are directly related to measuring coagulation, which is what they are mostly worried about when they test your father's blood.  In general terms, the PT (prothrombin time) and the aPTT (activated partial thromboplastin time) measure what are called the tissue factor pathway (formerly the "extrinsic pathway") and the contact activation pathway (formerly "intrinsic pathway") of coagulation, respectively.  

It's a little too complicated to explain briefly, but basically, the tissue factor (TF) pathway goes through the Vitamin K-related blood clotting factors (II, VII, IX, X and fibrinogen) while the contact activation(CA) pathway does not (and they both converge on a common pathway later on).  The TF pathway is therefore related to warfarin (aka Coumadin) administration (because warfarin prevents vitamin K from making those factors) while the CA pathway is affected by other anticoagulants like heparin.

The INR is the International Normalized Ratio and it is just a way of adjusting the PT number so that different preparations of warfarin can all be evaluated on a single scale.  The "normal" INR is around 1 (most labs use something like 0.8-1.2 as the range) but in your father's case, they will be aiming for that to be higher, probably between 2 and 3 (BUT I don't know your father's condition and what the target number is does vary, so his doctor is the person to ask about that).  They need to keep testing it because they also don't want it to go higher than that.