Pediatric Hemoglobin levels

Specialties Pediatric

Published

I was in clinicals yesterday and the nurse who I was with was freaking out because one of her patients who is 2 had a hemoglobin of 118. What is Normal ? I was just shadowing so I really have no idea what was going on.

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I think that has to be a misprint. You might see pediatric hemoglobin in the range of 11-15, with anything above 18 likely requiring treatment by a specialist. I don't know if 118 would be physically possible. Never seen it anywhere near that high and I worked for a blood bank for five years.

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Nope we use a different system here. I am not sure of the conversion though.

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Oh - you're in Canada. Duh! Sorry! You guys use g/L apparently instead of g/dL, which means your values would come out ten times higher than ours. Weird that we use different ones, because g/dL and g/L are both metric.

In that case though, I really don't see a 118 as a panic value. Maybe slightly low. Would depend on her previous values.

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