Salamon emphasizes the need to look at someone’s entire picture of health to interpret a blood test. Minor fluctuations in test results may also reflectĭr.
“It’s common for BUN to go up if you don’t drink enough, and that can happen when someone is fasting before having blood drawn.” So, what does it mean if your BUN level is at the very high end of the normal range? “If I see that it’s borderline high, I might ignore it,” says Dr. Excess urea is removed from the blood by the kidneys, so high levels of BUN in the blood can indicate that kidney function is declining. Take, for example, a routine measure of blood urea nitrogen (BUN), a waste product created as your body breaks down the protein in your diet. And many people are consistently on one side or the other of the normal range, and for them, that’s healthy,” says Dr. “Blood test results can vary a little bit, depending on the lab. If your result is a 9.1 mg/dL, right in the middle, you can feel confident that your calcium level is normal.īut what if a blood test result is at the very low or high end of normal, or even slightly outside the normal range? Is that a red flag? “Don’t jump to conclusions,” warns Dr. For example, if your routine blood work includes a test for calcium in the blood, your lab may list the normal range for calcium as 8.3 to 9.9 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). When you look at a printout of your lab results, you’ll find the normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. About normal ranges and interpreting the numbers Suzanne Salamon, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. In others, it might indicate an important change in health that we need to follow or act on,” says geriatrician Dr. Should you be concerned? “It’s tricky, because in some tests, a borderline result makes no difference. Picture this: you’re reading the results of your recent bloodwork, and you notice some numbers are teetering on the edge of the normal range. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Please note the date each article was posted or last reviewed. ARCHIVED CONTENT: As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content.
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