Diagnostic Tests for Alcohol Use

There are a variety of diagnostic tests that are put to use in the medical community to test for how much alcohol an individual has consumed and how exactly the consumption of alcohol has affected the person’s bodily organs. Alcohol can have a devastating effect on many different organs of the body including the liver, the kidneys and the brain. Some of the most commonly done medical diagnostic tests are liver function tests, full blood count and blood alcohol content.

Liver function tests (abbreviated to LFTs or LFs) take into account liver enzymes. The liver function tests are sets of clinical biochemistry laboratory blood tests that are geared towards illuminating information about the condition of a person’s liver. When it comes to liver related problems, initially there are no symptoms at all but these give way to mild symptoms. It is essential that liver problems be found out early because left unchecked, liver related diseases could be deadly. Hepatitis can sometimes be a part of any number of liver diseases. Tests for hepatitis need to be conducted by a medical technologist who will test the plasma or serum of a patient’s and this sample is always collected by a phlebotomist.

The standard liver panel includes a variety of measurements such as total protein (TP), albumin (Alb), alanine transaminase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and total bilirubin (TBIL). Other medical tests that are often done when LFT tests are done include gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), 5′ nucleotidase (5′NTD), coagulation tests such as INR and serum glucose such as BG and Glu.

A full blood count (FBC) or a complete blood count (CBC) is also sometimes known as a full blood exam (FBE). This is also sometimes called a “hemogram.” The full blood count is a type of medical test that a physician orders for a patient and this test provides information regarding the cells that are to be found in a person’s bloodstream. A medical technologist performs the test on the patient and then communicates the results to the patient’s physician.

There are three kinds of cells that are found in the blood and these include red blood cells (erythrocytes), white blood cells (leukocytes) and thrombocytes (or platelets). If the blood count of a patient’s is either abnormally low or abnormally high this could point to the presence of a disease or worse, more than on kind of disease.

Blood alcohol content (or BAC) is another type of medical diagnostic test that is sometimes also referred to as blood alcohol concentration and this means basically a measurement of the concentration of alcohol that is to be found in a person’s bloodstream. The BAC test is measured by mass, or mass by volume or sometimes as a combination of the two. To use an example, a blood alcohol content that is 0.20% will indicate that in a person’s bloodstream they have two grams of alcohol for every 1000 grams of blood. To look at it another way, this means that there is 0.2 grams of alcohol for every 100 millilitres (also known as decilitres) of blood.

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