Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffYou may find out you have thrombocythemia through a routine blood test that shows you have a higher than normal platelet count. Or, if you've had an unexpected blood clot or bleeding episode, or your doctor finds that your spleen is enlarged, your doctor may order a complete blood count (CBC) to determine your platelet count. A blood smear — a test in which a small amount of your blood is examined under a microscope — helps determine the condition of your platelets. Other blood tests can determine whether you have genetic factors that can cause a high platelet count.
If your blood count is above 600,000 platelets per microliter of blood, then your doctor will look for an underlying condition. If there's no evident cause of your high platelet count, and if your platelet count remains high over time, then your doctor may request a bone marrow test. There are two types of bone marrow tests, which provide different but complementary information about your blood cells. Often, they're done together.
- Bone marrow aspiration. Your doctor extracts a small amount of your liquid bone marrow through a needle and examines it under a microscope, looking for abnormal cells.
- Bone marrow biopsy. Your doctor takes a sample of solid bone marrow tissue through a needle for examination under a microscope. If you have thrombocythemia, your bone marrow has more than a normal amount of the large cells that make platelets.
