Challenges with common laboratory tests in the adult cancer patient

Laboratory testing in cancer patients poses some unique challenges due to both the patient’s cancer as well as the treatments for the patient’s cancer. Cancers hijack the patient’s normal physiological processes such as cell growth, cell death, vessel growth, inflammation, and coagulation in ways that are generally abnormal; thus the laboratory measurements of such processes reflect these abnormalities. In addition, various cancer treatments, while killing off the cancer cells, can also have effects on the patient’s normal tissues which may be reflected in expected and unexpected abnormal laboratory measurements. In addition, some treatment methodologies directly interfere with the testing methods themselves. In this chapter, we describe a wide range of challenges to the performance and interpretation of common laboratory tests in the adult cancer patient.