LDH

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After fighting colon cancer for six years I was given the all clear and discharged.

Along with my colon cancer during my second colon cancer op they found cancerous lymph nodes and a small part on my small intestine.

Diagnosed with Follacular Lymphoma treatment was wait and see with regular blood tests and scans, have just had two blood tests and both came back with high LDH.

The consultant has now said that he wants to wait 3 months to see if LDH comes back to normal.

is this normal practice and just how serious I’d high LDH

  • Thanks for getting in touch and welcome to the online community. My name is Joanne and I’m one of the Macmillan cancer information nurses.

    I’m sorry to hear that you now have a diagnosis of Follicular lymphoma after your colon cancer treatment. You may find it useful to have a look at our Macmillan Follicular Lymphoma forum for further support.

    Active monitoring is an important part of the management of your lymphoma and it can be a worry when you are told that some blood test results are outside normal ranges.

    Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH)is an enzyme is normally found within almost all the cells of the body.

    When cells are damaged LDH will be released into the bloodstream and the levels of the enzyme can be measured with a blood test.

    Raised LDH levels can be caused by several different health conditions including lymphomas.

    The enzyme levels can rise as the cell damage occurs, peak after varying time periods and may then begin to fall.

    When elevated LDH levels are caused by a chronic or progressive condition, the elevated levels may persist.

    Blood tests themselves cannot identify the exact cause or source of cell damage and raised LDH levels themselves are not used to diagnose a specific issue but will be used in conjunction with other tests and an assessment of your symptoms and overall wellbeing to enable your team to plan the next step of your monitoring and treatment.

    Occasionally a test result will show a raised LDH level because of issues with how the blood sample was taken, stored, or handled – this can cause breakage of the blood cells after the blood sample was taken and can give an artificially high result.

    This is why medical teams will arrange for blood tests to be repeated at intervals and the results used along with other tests and investigations to monitor and assess what is happening.

    As we don’t have access to your individual healthcare records here on the support line, we would always encourage you to speak to your team for further reassurance particularly around the timescale for your next tests.

    I hope this information has been useful today. If you would like to talk things through in more detail, please do give us a call on the support line.

    Ref JH/Khe

    Joanne H - Cancer Information Nurse Specialist

    Remember you can also speak with the Macmillan Support Line team of experts. Phone free on 0808 808 00 00 (7 days a week, 8am-8pm) or by email.